Subject
Re: Julius on Eliot & VN reference (fwd)
Date
Body
From: ValSyl@aol.com
Ryan Asmussen wrote:
"Regarding my ten day old submission [snip] to which
Ms. Wendel refers below, I would just like to say that I was not attacking
Julius at all [snip] The author of the article took a dim view of AJ's
reasoning; however, it was neither an attack nor was it needling. As I said
in my report, it was a brief reference, but surely it does have something to
do with VN, and
thus worthy of submission?"
In the sense that any reference, anywhere, to VN merits posting, yes, it was
worthy of submission, and I was incorrect in objecting to it on those
grounds.
I have read the NY'r article a few times, though, and I do believe the writer
chose to denigrate Mr. Julius specifically, with a peculiar, insistent
relish. This was one of those articles where, halfway through, you say to
yourself, "Something else is going on here -- something personal," and you
either sigh and toss the magazine to one side, or you keep reading in the
hope of _schadenfreude_, in this case that the author will slip up and reveal
the emotional, and hence irrational, nature of his problem with the matter in
the first place. Perhaps he (I think it was Anthony Lane?) doesn't think
ghaaastly divorce lawyers should be writing about poe-ets. Perhaps I am
completely wrong.
On Eliot and Fitzgerald, I think the finest comment came last week from David
Slavitt, who wrote:
>My view has always been that to read writers who were anti-Semitic is to
>triumph over them. What could have displeased Trollope more than to have
>someone like me reading his virulently anti-Semitic novels with great
>pleasure and some amusement. Ezra Pound's Cantos ought to be translated in
>Yiddish!
Of course, VN's riposte to that might have been: that's all very fine and
well, but you can't MAKE me read Dostoevsky.
Alas, my day job calls --
Sylvia
Sylvia Weiser Wendel
Ryan Asmussen wrote:
"Regarding my ten day old submission [snip] to which
Ms. Wendel refers below, I would just like to say that I was not attacking
Julius at all [snip] The author of the article took a dim view of AJ's
reasoning; however, it was neither an attack nor was it needling. As I said
in my report, it was a brief reference, but surely it does have something to
do with VN, and
thus worthy of submission?"
In the sense that any reference, anywhere, to VN merits posting, yes, it was
worthy of submission, and I was incorrect in objecting to it on those
grounds.
I have read the NY'r article a few times, though, and I do believe the writer
chose to denigrate Mr. Julius specifically, with a peculiar, insistent
relish. This was one of those articles where, halfway through, you say to
yourself, "Something else is going on here -- something personal," and you
either sigh and toss the magazine to one side, or you keep reading in the
hope of _schadenfreude_, in this case that the author will slip up and reveal
the emotional, and hence irrational, nature of his problem with the matter in
the first place. Perhaps he (I think it was Anthony Lane?) doesn't think
ghaaastly divorce lawyers should be writing about poe-ets. Perhaps I am
completely wrong.
On Eliot and Fitzgerald, I think the finest comment came last week from David
Slavitt, who wrote:
>My view has always been that to read writers who were anti-Semitic is to
>triumph over them. What could have displeased Trollope more than to have
>someone like me reading his virulently anti-Semitic novels with great
>pleasure and some amusement. Ezra Pound's Cantos ought to be translated in
>Yiddish!
Of course, VN's riposte to that might have been: that's all very fine and
well, but you can't MAKE me read Dostoevsky.
Alas, my day job calls --
Sylvia
Sylvia Weiser Wendel