Subject
VN, Freud, Boyd (fwd)
From
Date
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***I would like to state for the record that I object to the tone of the
posting below because, in my opinion, it is unnecessarily personal and
hostile. I asked Jim Morrison to make it less so but he refused, leaving
me with a dilemma as to whether to post it as is or not. I think he
expresses views which deserve to be heard, and I also feel that, having
posted several messages from DN which were even stronger in their personal
and hostile tone, we, as moderators, do not have right now high editorial
ground to ask other subscribers to modify their discourse -- something
that Jim Morrison brought to my attention as well. I do hope, however,
that one day soon we will be able to regain that ground, and that Nabokv-L
will revert once again to people expressing their views, including harsh
criticisms, in a civilized and respectful manner.
On a different subject, if you wonder why Don Johnson, who has
been back from Costa Rica for a while, is not resuming his editorship,
the simple answer is El Nino. They are fine, having weathered the
storms quite well (knock on wood) but their phone/electronic system has
not fared as well. It should be fixed by Monday. *** GD
-------------
From: Jim Morrison jamorrison@metronet.de
I don't want this to turn into a flame war, but
I have a few bones to pick with Brian Boyd.
His recent post heavily criticizes
Freudian psychoanalysis and French style
deconstruction for exaggeration, overemphasis
of small details, and plain old bad thinking.
I find Boyd's biography on Nabokov full
of those same faults. Such as his solution
to the Pale Fire narrator problem. Has anyone else
noticed his failure to reply to Dmitri's post
on his father's thoughts on who is the
narrator of Pale Fire? Please Brian, let us
know how you plan to adjust your theory
given this new evidence. Will you incorporate
his email into new editions of The American
Years? At least acknowledge
it may cause problems for your theory. Or do you
plan simply to ignore the criticism, as you rightly
accuse the Freudians of doing?
Let me quote one troubling line among many in his
biography that is absurd in its scope.
It's on page 235 of my paperback edition
of The American Years. It's the beginning of
the second paragraph of section VI of the
chapter "Lolita."
"No novelist knows the
art of preparation better than Nabokov,
who begins to characterize Lolita even before
we see her."
The part of that sentence I find troubling is
the initial phrase "No novelist..."
Really? Are we actually to think that
Boyd has studied every person who has
ever written a novel, that he is a fit person
to make pronouncements on the technical ability
of each and every novelist? I hope not. And I doubt he, if pressed,
would defend this sentence. I bet he would
say that hidden in that sentence is a qualifying
phrase such as "to the best of my knowledge."
Or perhaps he would say "What I meant to write
was that Nabokov is very good at the art of preparation."
I'm quite willing to read him charitably like that, to
qualify those claims for him.
What I'm asking from all you people who are so anti-
fill-in-the-blank that you to be more charitable in your
readings of those works you despise so much.
It's false that Freud has nothing
to say to us, that he is too primitive, too bad of a
scientist, too much of a liar for us to bother reading.
We can learn from him.
Take Lolita, Nabokov's most famous novel. Can't we
have a sensible discussion about part one of Lolita
being an allegory of what happens when a person
can not control his or her libido? And can't we read
part two as an allegory of what happens when a person
can not control his or her death instinct? I'm not saying
this is the one and only way to read Lolita, but it seems
a more correct, more explanatory reading than
saying Lolita is ultimately a love story.
Part one concerns Eros; part two deals with Thanatos.
Is that really a ridiculous claim not worth discussing,
that is only worth mockery and ridicule? Isn't it
possible to work with those Freudian concepts?
I guess what I'm getting at is that I wish Boyd would
have taken the time to clean his own house before
he barged into someone else's and looked around
and said something to the effect of "You are a bunch
of dumb pigs." We all know that academic writing
demands that you take strong positions, sometimes
stronger than you would like to keep the argument
moving. You just can't qualify every debatable
sentence you ever write. I know that the Freudians
and the deconstructionlist speak in absolutist rhetoric,
but so does Boyd. So do we all. Let's try to give
everybody a break and see what we can learn
from each other instead of scornfully dismissing people
without trying to understand them.
Jim Morrison
jamorrison@metronet.de
posting below because, in my opinion, it is unnecessarily personal and
hostile. I asked Jim Morrison to make it less so but he refused, leaving
me with a dilemma as to whether to post it as is or not. I think he
expresses views which deserve to be heard, and I also feel that, having
posted several messages from DN which were even stronger in their personal
and hostile tone, we, as moderators, do not have right now high editorial
ground to ask other subscribers to modify their discourse -- something
that Jim Morrison brought to my attention as well. I do hope, however,
that one day soon we will be able to regain that ground, and that Nabokv-L
will revert once again to people expressing their views, including harsh
criticisms, in a civilized and respectful manner.
On a different subject, if you wonder why Don Johnson, who has
been back from Costa Rica for a while, is not resuming his editorship,
the simple answer is El Nino. They are fine, having weathered the
storms quite well (knock on wood) but their phone/electronic system has
not fared as well. It should be fixed by Monday. *** GD
-------------
From: Jim Morrison jamorrison@metronet.de
I don't want this to turn into a flame war, but
I have a few bones to pick with Brian Boyd.
His recent post heavily criticizes
Freudian psychoanalysis and French style
deconstruction for exaggeration, overemphasis
of small details, and plain old bad thinking.
I find Boyd's biography on Nabokov full
of those same faults. Such as his solution
to the Pale Fire narrator problem. Has anyone else
noticed his failure to reply to Dmitri's post
on his father's thoughts on who is the
narrator of Pale Fire? Please Brian, let us
know how you plan to adjust your theory
given this new evidence. Will you incorporate
his email into new editions of The American
Years? At least acknowledge
it may cause problems for your theory. Or do you
plan simply to ignore the criticism, as you rightly
accuse the Freudians of doing?
Let me quote one troubling line among many in his
biography that is absurd in its scope.
It's on page 235 of my paperback edition
of The American Years. It's the beginning of
the second paragraph of section VI of the
chapter "Lolita."
"No novelist knows the
art of preparation better than Nabokov,
who begins to characterize Lolita even before
we see her."
The part of that sentence I find troubling is
the initial phrase "No novelist..."
Really? Are we actually to think that
Boyd has studied every person who has
ever written a novel, that he is a fit person
to make pronouncements on the technical ability
of each and every novelist? I hope not. And I doubt he, if pressed,
would defend this sentence. I bet he would
say that hidden in that sentence is a qualifying
phrase such as "to the best of my knowledge."
Or perhaps he would say "What I meant to write
was that Nabokov is very good at the art of preparation."
I'm quite willing to read him charitably like that, to
qualify those claims for him.
What I'm asking from all you people who are so anti-
fill-in-the-blank that you to be more charitable in your
readings of those works you despise so much.
It's false that Freud has nothing
to say to us, that he is too primitive, too bad of a
scientist, too much of a liar for us to bother reading.
We can learn from him.
Take Lolita, Nabokov's most famous novel. Can't we
have a sensible discussion about part one of Lolita
being an allegory of what happens when a person
can not control his or her libido? And can't we read
part two as an allegory of what happens when a person
can not control his or her death instinct? I'm not saying
this is the one and only way to read Lolita, but it seems
a more correct, more explanatory reading than
saying Lolita is ultimately a love story.
Part one concerns Eros; part two deals with Thanatos.
Is that really a ridiculous claim not worth discussing,
that is only worth mockery and ridicule? Isn't it
possible to work with those Freudian concepts?
I guess what I'm getting at is that I wish Boyd would
have taken the time to clean his own house before
he barged into someone else's and looked around
and said something to the effect of "You are a bunch
of dumb pigs." We all know that academic writing
demands that you take strong positions, sometimes
stronger than you would like to keep the argument
moving. You just can't qualify every debatable
sentence you ever write. I know that the Freudians
and the deconstructionlist speak in absolutist rhetoric,
but so does Boyd. So do we all. Let's try to give
everybody a break and see what we can learn
from each other instead of scornfully dismissing people
without trying to understand them.
Jim Morrison
jamorrison@metronet.de