On Aug 19, 2010, at 10:48 AM, Stan Kelly-Bootle wrote:

One quote from the Times Obit is particularly relevant to Blogger James Heflin’s reckless shot-gun attack on literary academe.
(Heflin overlooks the sheer FUN of critical feuding! Why else buy TLS, LRB, NYRB ... ? And do we detect Heflin as critic manqué? His own bland ventures into LitCrit (Pale Fire’s gorgeous prose; utter brilliance ...) call for some creative expansion before grabbing peer-reviewed interest or gaining tenure?!

But that masterful prose artist is, like James Joyce, always in danger of being devoured by critics. By which I mean people who give their lives meaning by deconstructing works of art that don't need their help, academic sorts who get so caught up in out-clevering and out-egoing each other that they obscure brilliant, vibrant literature in layer upon layer of self-important nattering, making it seem less and less accessible to the unwashed.

James Heflin

While I think Mr. Heflin overstates his case, his sentences are not so weak, and their overall sense worth heeding. Writers like Joyce & Nabokov, even Shakespeare, have deliberately written puzzles into their works. Why should it be innately bad for the reader/critic to speculate and offer solutions to such puzzles?

On the other hand the boundaries, purposes, methods and practices of criticism and analysis have historically been deplored for one reason or another. Pale Fire itself is mainly a satire about criticism, analysis, and projected semantics.

Anyhow I've taken the liberty to cast his words into iambic pen:

And so that master artist always is
In danger of his work being devoured
by critics striving to inflate their lives
by deconstructing works of art that don't
really need their help; academic
types, who lose themselves, out-clevering,
out-egoing each other; so much so,
that they defile a vibrant literature
with layer upon layer of fatuous prat
that thus obscures far more than it explains.

(This kind of exercise is intended to demonstrate to the reader whatever the heightening effect of simple versification, the mere regularization of accent, is, for better or for worse.)

Frank Kermode too found it necessary to criticize the critics:

From NYT Obit, August 18, 2010:

“What I do is despised by some younger critics, who want everything to sound extremely technical. I spent a long time developing an intelligible style. But these critics despise people who don’t use unintelligible jargon.”

...he clearly had little patience for critics who seemed to write only for other critics. As he wrote in “Pieces of My Mind: Essays and Criticism 1958-2002” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), criticism “can be quite humbly and sometimes even quite magnificently useful.” But it must also “give pleasure,” he added, “like the other arts.”

–GSL

ps.

Congratulation to great grandpa Stan!

and fur Elise, for making her great grand-

father so proud. And hardy applause for

Alexey's verse-translation. I enjoyed it all!

Search the archive	Contact the Editors	Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla	View Nabokv-L Policies	Manage subscription options

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.