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Re: [Fwd: Re:PF and Parody--response to JF]
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In a message dated 1/27/2010 7:23:31 AM Central Standard Time,
jerryfriedman1@GMAIL.COM writes:
> One place I disagree with Dupee is that he calls Shade "rustic", and
> others here have agreed. Yes, Shade grew up and still lives in a country
> house, but I don't see what's so rustic about the poem. Certainly not the
> language. I admit, though, that I haven't known many country people, and the
> rather rural area where I live now (northern New Mexico) has important
> differences from Appalachia. If the idea is that his interest in nature is
> rustic, I find it suburban, like mine. Country people I've known have been
> interested in nature from the angles of hunting, fishing, gathering, logging,
> and protecting their farms against pests, as well as in its more spectacular
> manifestations, but not in scientific names or in dingy butterflies. My
> idea of a rustic American poet is James Dickey, not Robert Frost. Maybe
> those who know the real Appalachia better than I do can comment.
Shade sure has a lot of close neighbors (especially CK!) if he lives in a
"country house." Whittier may have been one of our few truly "rustic" poets
and Frost merely "rural," but Dickey was as suburban as they come, born and
raised in the toney Buckhead part of Atlanta, educated at Vanderbilt, and
spending his adult life as an advertising executive and, both earlier and
later, an academic. Deliverance may portray some nasty rustics, but they're
seen from the perspective of a group of faux good ol' boys out for a weekend's
adventure, nicely outfitted by Abercrombie and Fitch (as it then was). And
if anyone is the ur-model of the contemporary "academic" poet (and most of
the poets I know these days, myself included, are academics--if you need
verification of this claim, just attend the annual AWP convention) it's Frost,
who was steadily employed by colleges and universities from the 1920s
onward--Amherst, Michigan, Dartmouth, Harvard, et al. I don't think recent times
have seen a true American rustic poet, with the possible exceptions of Wendell
Berry, who writes from his small farm in Kentucky, or the early John
Haines, writing from the Alaskan outback.
Shade isn't rustic, not even rural, just born and bred suburban and
academic. A college town in "Appalachia" doesn't differ much from one in upstate
New York or one in Georgia or one, I suspect, in northern New Mexico. With
the exception of his summer excursions, VN spent virtually all of his American
years in academic environs, beginning with Stanford the first summer he was
in the U. S., where he met and socialized with Yvor Winters, at the time
one of the few American poets with academic tenure.
It's important to note that the American college town, with its peculiar
culture, it's sometimes uneasy "town and gown" mix, must have made a huge
impression on a writer who had had almost no contact with any kind of academic
setting since his Cambridge years. Pnin and PF are both "campus novels," as
is, to a lesser degree, Lolita, with Hum and Lo's trips being tied to and
timed with the academic calendar. If VN knew any American setting intimately,
it was the college community.
VN certainly assimilated well to his new life on American campuses, but,
with his aristocratic background, his "foreignness," and his lack of advanced
academic degrees, must have always felt something of an outsider as a
faculty member, not that he didn't play the part to perfection. In this regard,
it's easy to see both Pnin and CK as mutations of himself, the former as one
who is incapable of adapting (language!) and the latter as one whose
metamorphosis has taken him to the lunatic extreme.
Both Pnin and Kinbote are figures of fun in their respective academic
communities, though CK seems to be seen as dangerous as well (with good reason,
given his ping pong table and student guests). Was VN also imitated, for his
accent and his manners, behind his back by colleagues and students? As a
former student and longtime professor, I can firmly say, "Yes." Students
make fun of virtually all their professors' mannerisms and eccentricities; I
did it then, and they do it now. Sometimes it gets called to one's attention;
I was unaware until recently that I had the reputation of standing outside
our building's door (the distant northern realm of expatriate smokers)
talking to myself. And it's true. Sometimes I'm singing (can't do that in the
office!) and sometimes mumbling lines of a poem I'm working on. One
eccentricity noted--I won't go into the others. So VN, respected and sometimes
beloved teacher that he may have been, surely knew that there were those who
made fun of his accent or his "airs." Being secure in his ego, he probably
wasn't much bothered by this, but he also knew that someone less secure could
have been wounded (Pnin) or made paranoid (CK) by such common antics, which
aren't necessarily cruel.
To return to Shade, who still seems to me as conventionally "upright" as
any character invented by VN, I recall that someone recently referred to his
"drinking problem." Huh? Sybil probably doesn't like him to drink (he does
have health problems, after all), so he surreptitiously buys a secret pint
of brandy and is lured with the promise of a bottle of Tokay. This means
he's a drunk? And, of course, there are all the allusions that have popped up
here from time to time about that student in the leotards. He's got an eye
for good-looking female students (especially one whom his colleagues have
also noticed) and this makes him the father of an illegitimate child? Shade
has his dark side, to be sure, but I doubt that alcoholism and philandering
(given the sharp eye of Sybil) are parts of this.
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jerryfriedman1@GMAIL.COM writes:
> One place I disagree with Dupee is that he calls Shade "rustic", and
> others here have agreed. Yes, Shade grew up and still lives in a country
> house, but I don't see what's so rustic about the poem. Certainly not the
> language. I admit, though, that I haven't known many country people, and the
> rather rural area where I live now (northern New Mexico) has important
> differences from Appalachia. If the idea is that his interest in nature is
> rustic, I find it suburban, like mine. Country people I've known have been
> interested in nature from the angles of hunting, fishing, gathering, logging,
> and protecting their farms against pests, as well as in its more spectacular
> manifestations, but not in scientific names or in dingy butterflies. My
> idea of a rustic American poet is James Dickey, not Robert Frost. Maybe
> those who know the real Appalachia better than I do can comment.
Shade sure has a lot of close neighbors (especially CK!) if he lives in a
"country house." Whittier may have been one of our few truly "rustic" poets
and Frost merely "rural," but Dickey was as suburban as they come, born and
raised in the toney Buckhead part of Atlanta, educated at Vanderbilt, and
spending his adult life as an advertising executive and, both earlier and
later, an academic. Deliverance may portray some nasty rustics, but they're
seen from the perspective of a group of faux good ol' boys out for a weekend's
adventure, nicely outfitted by Abercrombie and Fitch (as it then was). And
if anyone is the ur-model of the contemporary "academic" poet (and most of
the poets I know these days, myself included, are academics--if you need
verification of this claim, just attend the annual AWP convention) it's Frost,
who was steadily employed by colleges and universities from the 1920s
onward--Amherst, Michigan, Dartmouth, Harvard, et al. I don't think recent times
have seen a true American rustic poet, with the possible exceptions of Wendell
Berry, who writes from his small farm in Kentucky, or the early John
Haines, writing from the Alaskan outback.
Shade isn't rustic, not even rural, just born and bred suburban and
academic. A college town in "Appalachia" doesn't differ much from one in upstate
New York or one in Georgia or one, I suspect, in northern New Mexico. With
the exception of his summer excursions, VN spent virtually all of his American
years in academic environs, beginning with Stanford the first summer he was
in the U. S., where he met and socialized with Yvor Winters, at the time
one of the few American poets with academic tenure.
It's important to note that the American college town, with its peculiar
culture, it's sometimes uneasy "town and gown" mix, must have made a huge
impression on a writer who had had almost no contact with any kind of academic
setting since his Cambridge years. Pnin and PF are both "campus novels," as
is, to a lesser degree, Lolita, with Hum and Lo's trips being tied to and
timed with the academic calendar. If VN knew any American setting intimately,
it was the college community.
VN certainly assimilated well to his new life on American campuses, but,
with his aristocratic background, his "foreignness," and his lack of advanced
academic degrees, must have always felt something of an outsider as a
faculty member, not that he didn't play the part to perfection. In this regard,
it's easy to see both Pnin and CK as mutations of himself, the former as one
who is incapable of adapting (language!) and the latter as one whose
metamorphosis has taken him to the lunatic extreme.
Both Pnin and Kinbote are figures of fun in their respective academic
communities, though CK seems to be seen as dangerous as well (with good reason,
given his ping pong table and student guests). Was VN also imitated, for his
accent and his manners, behind his back by colleagues and students? As a
former student and longtime professor, I can firmly say, "Yes." Students
make fun of virtually all their professors' mannerisms and eccentricities; I
did it then, and they do it now. Sometimes it gets called to one's attention;
I was unaware until recently that I had the reputation of standing outside
our building's door (the distant northern realm of expatriate smokers)
talking to myself. And it's true. Sometimes I'm singing (can't do that in the
office!) and sometimes mumbling lines of a poem I'm working on. One
eccentricity noted--I won't go into the others. So VN, respected and sometimes
beloved teacher that he may have been, surely knew that there were those who
made fun of his accent or his "airs." Being secure in his ego, he probably
wasn't much bothered by this, but he also knew that someone less secure could
have been wounded (Pnin) or made paranoid (CK) by such common antics, which
aren't necessarily cruel.
To return to Shade, who still seems to me as conventionally "upright" as
any character invented by VN, I recall that someone recently referred to his
"drinking problem." Huh? Sybil probably doesn't like him to drink (he does
have health problems, after all), so he surreptitiously buys a secret pint
of brandy and is lured with the promise of a bottle of Tokay. This means
he's a drunk? And, of course, there are all the allusions that have popped up
here from time to time about that student in the leotards. He's got an eye
for good-looking female students (especially one whom his colleagues have
also noticed) and this makes him the father of an illegitimate child? Shade
has his dark side, to be sure, but I doubt that alcoholism and philandering
(given the sharp eye of Sybil) are parts of this.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/