The dreaded time has come once again, as all things dreaded (taxes, the dentist, laundry day) seem to approach at lightning speed. Fall term begins in about a month, and I’ve got to prepare my courses and get some of that what they call "literary criticism" down on paper.
Since the time when I began dissertating and was thus allowed to design the courses myself, I have taught something by Nabokov every term. This time–finally!–it’ll be Pale Fire on the syllabus.
I generally poke around a bit on the internet looking at reviews and such during my planning: an exercise in frustration and ire that burns with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns. One review called the book "barely a novel," arguing, "it hardly warrants it’s 200 pages." Pure bollocks, obviously.
One thing that will stop me dead in my tracks and ensure that I will not even finish the first paragraph of a review, however, is if it begins thusly:
After the notoriety gained from his first novel written in
English (Lolita), Nabokov’s next work was very different.
Are you kidding me, you asshat? Nabokov’s first novel written in English was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, which was published in 1941, fourteen years before Lolita. And Pale Fire was hardly his "next work [after Lolita];" that was Pnin in 1957. Then Pale Fire in 1962, a whopping twenty-one years after his "first novel written in English." Jesus H. Christ.
The least he could do is a cursory check of the facts. I won’t even waste time on the problem of the guy’s opening sentence: a say-nothing filler stuffed with straw (Pale Fire "was very different," you say? Oh, do tell). Or that he’s never been taught to use the literary present tense or correctly hyphenate his compound modifiers.
Some might argue that the above tirade is nothing more than a tangent distracting me from the work I should be doing today–not so! Rather, it serves as a warm-up exercise for all of the grading I’ll soon have to do. Gross inaccuracies? Terrible writing? Check and check.
Better still, given past events, it behooves me to familiarize myself with what’s out there on the interwebs, since it’ll inevitably get highlighted, copied, and pasted into some illiterate lummox’s term paper before long.
One review called the book “barely a novel,” arguing, “it hardly warrants it’s 200 pages.” Pure bollocks, obviously.
And he inserted an apostrophe in ‘its’. Has the man no shame?
If I had any idea what a compound modifier was, I am certain that I would share your sense of outrage. Instead I shall merely laugh at his woeful knowledge of Nabokov’s publishing history.
it “was” very different? Does that mean it “is” the same now? What has the book become “since” it “was” different? Blech.
And speaking of woeful knowledge, even a simple search of wikipedia would have helped the guy avoid his massive errors!
And thanks for the link :-)
atlest he didn abuse the pasive voce. mistakes wuold than indeed have bean made.
i wroate a gorliously hidouse ‘cuould be seen’ paregraph a couple weeks ago. an it had ‘glabrous’ in it too. ota dig taht up an psot it.
p.s. teh best is froidian critisim about nabokov by poeple who skimed lolita an have read exacly zero (0) wrods of anythign else by im.
BW–Dear god, it just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?
L–Laugh away! One day I’ll do a post on modifiers. I’ll bet everyone will be on the edges of their seats unil that time comes…
R–I know, right! Gah! It’s not that difficult to figure out someone’s publication history, especially if one wants to be in the reviewing business.
HA–Heh, do it! And you’re so right about the psychoanalytic critics, especially in light of Nabokov’s feelings on that subject. I mean, the dude has got no mercy.