Subject
Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Saul Bellow -- an earnest admirer of Pnin and
Lolita ...: Martin Amis essay
Lolita ...: Martin Amis essay
From
Date
Body
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rodney Welch" <rodney41@mindspring.com>
>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (135
lines) ------------------
> Don -- It's March, as in forward, get it? I think maybe he's Augie
> because he augers something.
>
> RW
>
>
> On Friday, November 21, 2003, at 08:46 PM, D. Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> > EDNOTE. Interesting --after a preprandial Scotch. As a glimpse into the
> > young manhood of the editor I would mention that I recall getting so
> > annoyed
> > with _Augie March_(Marsh?), that I finished reading it in the shower
> > (over
> > several weeks 40-some years ago) and tearing out each page as I
> > finished it.
> > Yeah, _Humboldt's GIFT_, that was the onew I liked, sort of....
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Andrew Brown" <as-brown@comcast.net>
> >>
> >> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (85
> > lines) ------------------
> >> Nice to catch a note by you, Rodney. And I have to give a conditional
> > assent
> >> to your opinion on Augie. There's some Bellow work I've enjoyed
> >> immensely
> >> and reread and reread. Henderson and Humboldt being two. But somehow
> >> Augie
> >> was one of those that, after a series of dutiful evenings, I found
> >> myself
> >> just not picking up any more. Still haven't finished it, but will try
> >> and
> >> make myself do that, to give it a fair shake.
> >>
> >> Regarding milieux: couple months ago reread a book that, in my teens,
> >> I
> >> found enthralling, and which really influenced my earliest writing
> >> (for
> > good
> >> or ill). The Studs Lonigan trilogy by James T. Farrell. Was shocked
> >> at how
> >> clumsy and garrulous much of it sounds to me now. And how blindly and
> >> thumpingly Farrell was trying to Joycify his stuff. But still found
> >> many
> >> moments of uniquely American brutishness and wit.
> >>
> >> I doubt Nabokov would have found much of value in Farrell. I've seen
> >> no
> > sign
> >> that he ever read any of his work.
> >>
> >> AB
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
> >> To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> >> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 11:43 AM
> >> Subject: Fw: Fw: Saul Bellow -- an earnest admirer of Pnin and Lolita
> >> ...:
> >> Martin Amis essay
> >>
> >>
> >>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>> From: "Rodney Welch" <rodney41@mindspring.com>
> >>>
> >>>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (48
> >>> lines) ------------------
> >>>> In his memoir "Experience," Amis calls Nabokov and Bellow his "twin
> >>>> peaks." He goes on to write: "Nabokov, ridiculously, once dismissed
> >>>> Bellow as `a miserable mediocrity', an evaluation based (I am
> >>>> confident) on slender acquaintance with his stuff..." I'm less
> >>>> confident; the work of Bellow that Amis (and Christopher Hitchens
> >>>> and
> >>>> James Wood and Salman Rushdie) nominates for the great American
> >>>> novel
> >>>> is "The Adventures of Augie March," which strikes me as the work of
> >>>> a
> >>>> complete windbag. I am not at all convinced by the many arguments
> >>>> put
> >>>> forth in its behalf in recent weeks that it is some kind of Joycean
> >>>> masterpiece of language or the American idiom or what-have-you; I
> >>>> read
> >>>> it quite carefully a few years ago and it was clear to me throughout
> >>>> that not only is it not great, it isn't very good either. It's a
> >>>> rambling self-absorbed picaresque, penned by a young man under the
> >>>> spell of his own unlovable and unlovely voice -- which, as
> >>>> subsequent
> >>>> novels indicate, he was neither able nor -- by most critics --
> >>>> encouraged to shake. I don't get my opinions from Nabokov or base
> >>>> them
> >>>> on what he might have thought, but I cannot imagine that he would
> >>>> have
> >>>> found anything to like in Bellow's clotted prose.
> >>>>
> >>>> Rodney Welch
> >>>> Columbia, SC
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Thursday, November 20, 2003, at 09:27 PM, D. Barton Johnson
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>>>> From: <nitrogen14@australia.edu>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (11
> >>>>> lines) ------------------
> >>>>>> "Still, I propose to make an educated guess about >literary
> > futures,
> >>>>>> and I
> >>>>>> hereby trumpet the prediction that Saul Bellow >will emerge as the
> >>>>>> supreme
> >>>>>> American novelist."
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I can recall when Amis fils was predicting World War 3, and his
> >>>>>> own
> >>>>>> 'need'
> >>>>>> during WW3, to shoot his wife and children to spare them the
> > ravages
> >>>>>> of
> >>>>>> radiation poisoning. I suspect his latest prediction has an
> >>>>>> equally
> >>>>>> good
> >>>>>> chance of being realised.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>
> >
>
From: "Rodney Welch" <rodney41@mindspring.com>
>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (135
lines) ------------------
> Don -- It's March, as in forward, get it? I think maybe he's Augie
> because he augers something.
>
> RW
>
>
> On Friday, November 21, 2003, at 08:46 PM, D. Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> > EDNOTE. Interesting --after a preprandial Scotch. As a glimpse into the
> > young manhood of the editor I would mention that I recall getting so
> > annoyed
> > with _Augie March_(Marsh?), that I finished reading it in the shower
> > (over
> > several weeks 40-some years ago) and tearing out each page as I
> > finished it.
> > Yeah, _Humboldt's GIFT_, that was the onew I liked, sort of....
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Andrew Brown" <as-brown@comcast.net>
> >>
> >> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (85
> > lines) ------------------
> >> Nice to catch a note by you, Rodney. And I have to give a conditional
> > assent
> >> to your opinion on Augie. There's some Bellow work I've enjoyed
> >> immensely
> >> and reread and reread. Henderson and Humboldt being two. But somehow
> >> Augie
> >> was one of those that, after a series of dutiful evenings, I found
> >> myself
> >> just not picking up any more. Still haven't finished it, but will try
> >> and
> >> make myself do that, to give it a fair shake.
> >>
> >> Regarding milieux: couple months ago reread a book that, in my teens,
> >> I
> >> found enthralling, and which really influenced my earliest writing
> >> (for
> > good
> >> or ill). The Studs Lonigan trilogy by James T. Farrell. Was shocked
> >> at how
> >> clumsy and garrulous much of it sounds to me now. And how blindly and
> >> thumpingly Farrell was trying to Joycify his stuff. But still found
> >> many
> >> moments of uniquely American brutishness and wit.
> >>
> >> I doubt Nabokov would have found much of value in Farrell. I've seen
> >> no
> > sign
> >> that he ever read any of his work.
> >>
> >> AB
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
> >> To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> >> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 11:43 AM
> >> Subject: Fw: Fw: Saul Bellow -- an earnest admirer of Pnin and Lolita
> >> ...:
> >> Martin Amis essay
> >>
> >>
> >>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>> From: "Rodney Welch" <rodney41@mindspring.com>
> >>>
> >>>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (48
> >>> lines) ------------------
> >>>> In his memoir "Experience," Amis calls Nabokov and Bellow his "twin
> >>>> peaks." He goes on to write: "Nabokov, ridiculously, once dismissed
> >>>> Bellow as `a miserable mediocrity', an evaluation based (I am
> >>>> confident) on slender acquaintance with his stuff..." I'm less
> >>>> confident; the work of Bellow that Amis (and Christopher Hitchens
> >>>> and
> >>>> James Wood and Salman Rushdie) nominates for the great American
> >>>> novel
> >>>> is "The Adventures of Augie March," which strikes me as the work of
> >>>> a
> >>>> complete windbag. I am not at all convinced by the many arguments
> >>>> put
> >>>> forth in its behalf in recent weeks that it is some kind of Joycean
> >>>> masterpiece of language or the American idiom or what-have-you; I
> >>>> read
> >>>> it quite carefully a few years ago and it was clear to me throughout
> >>>> that not only is it not great, it isn't very good either. It's a
> >>>> rambling self-absorbed picaresque, penned by a young man under the
> >>>> spell of his own unlovable and unlovely voice -- which, as
> >>>> subsequent
> >>>> novels indicate, he was neither able nor -- by most critics --
> >>>> encouraged to shake. I don't get my opinions from Nabokov or base
> >>>> them
> >>>> on what he might have thought, but I cannot imagine that he would
> >>>> have
> >>>> found anything to like in Bellow's clotted prose.
> >>>>
> >>>> Rodney Welch
> >>>> Columbia, SC
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Thursday, November 20, 2003, at 09:27 PM, D. Barton Johnson
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>>>> From: <nitrogen14@australia.edu>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (11
> >>>>> lines) ------------------
> >>>>>> "Still, I propose to make an educated guess about >literary
> > futures,
> >>>>>> and I
> >>>>>> hereby trumpet the prediction that Saul Bellow >will emerge as the
> >>>>>> supreme
> >>>>>> American novelist."
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I can recall when Amis fils was predicting World War 3, and his
> >>>>>> own
> >>>>>> 'need'
> >>>>>> during WW3, to shoot his wife and children to spare them the
> > ravages
> >>>>>> of
> >>>>>> radiation poisoning. I suspect his latest prediction has an
> >>>>>> equally
> >>>>>> good
> >>>>>> chance of being realised.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>
> >
>