Subject
Nabokov reference in "The New Yorker" (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Ryan Asmussen <rra@bu.edu>
On page 90 in the latest (March 10, 1997) "New Yorker" there is a reference
to VN in Anthony Lane's excellent review, "Writing Wrongs", of the, at
last, published early poems of T.S. Eliot entitled, "Inventions of the
March Hare: Poems 1909-1917" (Harcourt Brace; $30), edited by Christopher
Ricks.
The context is this: Lane, in criticizing Anthony Julius's charges of
anti-Semitism in Eliot (in Julius's notorious "T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism,
and Literary Form"), uses as an example of the latter's often "hard sell"
reasoning (my quotes) an instance in which Julius argues his case (as the
lawyer he is) solely on the grounds of Eliot's disparagement of Freud. How
then, Lane asks rhetorically, should one consider someone like Nabokov, a
relentless anti-Freudian, yet also a man who once had to be argued out of
throwing someone out of his house for making an anti-Semitic remark?
A brief reference, but a nice public reminder, despite continuing belief to
the contrary, of VN's humanity...
------------------------------------------------
Ryan Asmussen
Administrative Assistant, Faculty Services
Boston University School of Law
765 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
email: rra@acs.bu.edu
------------------------------------------------
On page 90 in the latest (March 10, 1997) "New Yorker" there is a reference
to VN in Anthony Lane's excellent review, "Writing Wrongs", of the, at
last, published early poems of T.S. Eliot entitled, "Inventions of the
March Hare: Poems 1909-1917" (Harcourt Brace; $30), edited by Christopher
Ricks.
The context is this: Lane, in criticizing Anthony Julius's charges of
anti-Semitism in Eliot (in Julius's notorious "T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism,
and Literary Form"), uses as an example of the latter's often "hard sell"
reasoning (my quotes) an instance in which Julius argues his case (as the
lawyer he is) solely on the grounds of Eliot's disparagement of Freud. How
then, Lane asks rhetorically, should one consider someone like Nabokov, a
relentless anti-Freudian, yet also a man who once had to be argued out of
throwing someone out of his house for making an anti-Semitic remark?
A brief reference, but a nice public reminder, despite continuing belief to
the contrary, of VN's humanity...
------------------------------------------------
Ryan Asmussen
Administrative Assistant, Faculty Services
Boston University School of Law
765 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
email: rra@acs.bu.edu
------------------------------------------------