Subject
Dept. of Corrections: NEW YORKER's "Conclusive Evidence"
Date
Body
From: Brian Boyd <bd.boyd@auckland.ac.nz>
Dear List,
I have just received the New Yorker issue in which (most of) Nabokov's
review of Conclusive Evidence is at last published. I immediately noticed
with amusement and regret that the New Yorker has edited the piece to cut
out its concluding joke.
This is particularly regrettable and amusing for occurring on the very
pages where Nabokov, surveying his relationship with the New Yorker,
especially in publishing most of the chapters of "Conclusive Evidence,"
comments at length on the magazine's occasionally helpful exactitude and
frequent fussy intrusiveness, especially on behalf of an average reader. At
one point on the last page of the article Nabokov comments: "A magazine, on
the other hand, may underrate its average consumer's ability to assimilate
the allusive, the oblique, the veiled -- and in such cases I do not believe
the author should yield," Then in the very next column the New Yorker edits
out his ending for fear of placing an undue strain on what Nabokov also
calls (speaking as it were for the magazine's editorial department) "the
span of a commuter's mind."
All the way through the review, the imagined reviewer makes comparisons of
the two books for review, "Conclusive Evidence" and one Barbara Braun's
"When Lilacs Last," although it focuses first on the Nabokov memoir. The
final sentence of the review reads (I am citing the last five words from
memory): "His memoirs will find a permanent place on the book lover's shelf
side by side with Leo Tolstoy's 'Childhood,' T.S. Elmann's 'Amen Corner,'
and Barbara Braun's 'When Lilacs Last,' to which I now turn."
The New Yorker pusillanimously and impercipiently cut the final phrase,
apparently fearing that some readers would reach this point and feel
cheated that there was no review of Barbara Braun's book to follow. Does
the magazine really think its readers that obtuse? Does it really think
that anyone capable of persevering this far, in a text written not in Basic
English but in Nabokovian, would have misunderstood the original concluding
phrase, and would have failed to enjoy the final twist of the joke on which
the whole review is premised?
Fortunately readers will get the whole text in the Everyman / Knopf
edition of Speak, Memory due out in April.
Best wishes,
Brian
Professor Brian Boyd
English Department
University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand
fax + 64 9 373 7429
tel + 64 9 377 7599 x 7480
e-mail: b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz
Dear List,
I have just received the New Yorker issue in which (most of) Nabokov's
review of Conclusive Evidence is at last published. I immediately noticed
with amusement and regret that the New Yorker has edited the piece to cut
out its concluding joke.
This is particularly regrettable and amusing for occurring on the very
pages where Nabokov, surveying his relationship with the New Yorker,
especially in publishing most of the chapters of "Conclusive Evidence,"
comments at length on the magazine's occasionally helpful exactitude and
frequent fussy intrusiveness, especially on behalf of an average reader. At
one point on the last page of the article Nabokov comments: "A magazine, on
the other hand, may underrate its average consumer's ability to assimilate
the allusive, the oblique, the veiled -- and in such cases I do not believe
the author should yield," Then in the very next column the New Yorker edits
out his ending for fear of placing an undue strain on what Nabokov also
calls (speaking as it were for the magazine's editorial department) "the
span of a commuter's mind."
All the way through the review, the imagined reviewer makes comparisons of
the two books for review, "Conclusive Evidence" and one Barbara Braun's
"When Lilacs Last," although it focuses first on the Nabokov memoir. The
final sentence of the review reads (I am citing the last five words from
memory): "His memoirs will find a permanent place on the book lover's shelf
side by side with Leo Tolstoy's 'Childhood,' T.S. Elmann's 'Amen Corner,'
and Barbara Braun's 'When Lilacs Last,' to which I now turn."
The New Yorker pusillanimously and impercipiently cut the final phrase,
apparently fearing that some readers would reach this point and feel
cheated that there was no review of Barbara Braun's book to follow. Does
the magazine really think its readers that obtuse? Does it really think
that anyone capable of persevering this far, in a text written not in Basic
English but in Nabokovian, would have misunderstood the original concluding
phrase, and would have failed to enjoy the final twist of the joke on which
the whole review is premised?
Fortunately readers will get the whole text in the Everyman / Knopf
edition of Speak, Memory due out in April.
Best wishes,
Brian
Professor Brian Boyd
English Department
University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand
fax + 64 9 373 7429
tel + 64 9 377 7599 x 7480
e-mail: b.boyd@auckland.ac.nz