JM: I couldn't ascertain at
first who, besides Nabokov, used "as American as April in Arizona": was it
JF himself, did it come from the article in Wikipedia?. I googled and was barred
to access to the article by SES:
"April in Arizona": Nabokov as an American Writer
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
American Literary History, Vol. 6, No. 2
(Summer, 1994), pp. 325-335
I have the impression that initially, not so long ago, one could reach
information more rapidly and openly, when using the Google, than it is
possible now, since we are often simply taken to the closed doors
of various institutions. Does this fit into our considerations about a new kind,
perhaps an indispensable one, of "elitism"?
Perhaps, if our discussion continues along these lines, we could start by
agreeing on a common definition for "elite", "flatness" and "hierarchy".
In one way or another, as a stranger to North American and North
European shores, I have been submerged
by a nationalistic perspective that robs me of my
"common-reader's" feeling of Nabokov's "universal appeal" ( or could I
say "universality/'?) - and this is not a complaint, although I
also cannot find words to describe what it is.