Subject
Re: VN, Lacan, & Ermarth (fwd)
Date
Body
Might these VN quotes help to answer Mr. Pascoe's query?
"I believe in stressing the specific detail; the general ideas can take
care of themselves...A divine work of art...will live on despite the
academic nonentities who turn it into a collection of symbols or Greek
myths. I once gave a student a C-minus, or perhaps a D-plus, just for
applying to its chapters the titles borrowed from Homer while not even
noticing the comings and goings of the man in the brown mackintosh. He
didn't even know who the man in the brown mackintosh was."(55-56, Strong
Opinions)
"ignore the floating decor and keep only the basic
substance" (xiii, Strong Opinions)
Taken from McGraw-Hill 1973 edition.
Joshua Ryan, a tiny Nabokovian.
> From: Dustin Coppock Pascoe <dcpasc0@pop.uky.edu>
> My apologies for not taking note of M. Edelstein's question earlier; to make
> up for it, here's the Ermarth citation, and maybe no one will have to go
> digging through dusty old piles of journals:
>
> "Conspicuous Construction: or, Kristeva, Nabokov, and the anti-Realist
> Critique." _Novel_ 21 (1988): 330-339.
>
> I do not know if this essay is included in her recent book.
>
> While I'm at it, does anyone want to hazard a guess (or point me in a
> specific direction) about VN's feelings toward the professionalization of
> the (literature) teaching culture? I know that he did some serious
> scholarly work on Pushkin and Gogol (and the _Slovo_), but as someone who
> believed that you had to read with your spine, he might have felt that the
> emphasis on critical enquiry (and we know, generally, what he thought of
> that) was detracting from the mission of teaching "great" books. Have I
> answered my own question? Feedback?
>
> Dustin C. Pascoe
> University of Kentucky
>
> "Ah, you bright and risen angels, you are all in your graves! I, your
> author, am lonely . . ."
>
"I believe in stressing the specific detail; the general ideas can take
care of themselves...A divine work of art...will live on despite the
academic nonentities who turn it into a collection of symbols or Greek
myths. I once gave a student a C-minus, or perhaps a D-plus, just for
applying to its chapters the titles borrowed from Homer while not even
noticing the comings and goings of the man in the brown mackintosh. He
didn't even know who the man in the brown mackintosh was."(55-56, Strong
Opinions)
"ignore the floating decor and keep only the basic
substance" (xiii, Strong Opinions)
Taken from McGraw-Hill 1973 edition.
Joshua Ryan, a tiny Nabokovian.
> From: Dustin Coppock Pascoe <dcpasc0@pop.uky.edu>
> My apologies for not taking note of M. Edelstein's question earlier; to make
> up for it, here's the Ermarth citation, and maybe no one will have to go
> digging through dusty old piles of journals:
>
> "Conspicuous Construction: or, Kristeva, Nabokov, and the anti-Realist
> Critique." _Novel_ 21 (1988): 330-339.
>
> I do not know if this essay is included in her recent book.
>
> While I'm at it, does anyone want to hazard a guess (or point me in a
> specific direction) about VN's feelings toward the professionalization of
> the (literature) teaching culture? I know that he did some serious
> scholarly work on Pushkin and Gogol (and the _Slovo_), but as someone who
> believed that you had to read with your spine, he might have felt that the
> emphasis on critical enquiry (and we know, generally, what he thought of
> that) was detracting from the mission of teaching "great" books. Have I
> answered my own question? Feedback?
>
> Dustin C. Pascoe
> University of Kentucky
>
> "Ah, you bright and risen angels, you are all in your graves! I, your
> author, am lonely . . ."
>