Subject
Fw: Don Watson on Lolita
From
Date
Body
----- Original Message -----
From: <nitrogen14@australia.edu>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 5:45 PM
Subject: Don Watson on Lolita
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (29
lines) ------------------
> In his recent Australian book 'Death Sentence' (Knopf 2003
> <www.randomhouse.com.au>), Don Watson attacks the rise of managerial
> English. I don't think much of this book, but that's neither here nor
> there. The following extract will be of interest to nabokv-l; I am typing
> it in myself, but the ellipses are Watson's. I should add that Dr Watson
> was a speechwriter to Paul Keating, Australian Prime Minister for four
> years in the early 1990's.
> --Peter Hayes
>
> from pp 18-9:
> The change is foreseen in another masterpiece of those years, Vladimir
> Nabokov's *Lolita*. The principal of Lolita's school tells Humbert
Humbert:
>
> .... we are more interested in communication than composition. That is,
with
> due respect to Shakespeare and others, we want our girls to *communicate*
> freely with the live world around them rather than plunge into musty old
> books ...We think, Dr Humbert, in organismal and organisational terms ...
> What do we mean by education? ... we live not only in a world of thoughts
> but a world of things ... Words without experience are meaningless.
>
> The Principal's principles are those of the modern manager and
> communications teacher. He wanted to leave out of Lolita's education what
> they leave out: namely, the human mind - the thing that arrives at meaning
> through language and will not, without coercion or deceit, reduce to a cog
> in a machine or an item or organisation. Nabokov's Principal has triumphed
> absolutely.
>
>
>
From: <nitrogen14@australia.edu>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 5:45 PM
Subject: Don Watson on Lolita
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (29
lines) ------------------
> In his recent Australian book 'Death Sentence' (Knopf 2003
> <www.randomhouse.com.au>), Don Watson attacks the rise of managerial
> English. I don't think much of this book, but that's neither here nor
> there. The following extract will be of interest to nabokv-l; I am typing
> it in myself, but the ellipses are Watson's. I should add that Dr Watson
> was a speechwriter to Paul Keating, Australian Prime Minister for four
> years in the early 1990's.
> --Peter Hayes
>
> from pp 18-9:
> The change is foreseen in another masterpiece of those years, Vladimir
> Nabokov's *Lolita*. The principal of Lolita's school tells Humbert
Humbert:
>
> .... we are more interested in communication than composition. That is,
with
> due respect to Shakespeare and others, we want our girls to *communicate*
> freely with the live world around them rather than plunge into musty old
> books ...We think, Dr Humbert, in organismal and organisational terms ...
> What do we mean by education? ... we live not only in a world of thoughts
> but a world of things ... Words without experience are meaningless.
>
> The Principal's principles are those of the modern manager and
> communications teacher. He wanted to leave out of Lolita's education what
> they leave out: namely, the human mind - the thing that arrives at meaning
> through language and will not, without coercion or deceit, reduce to a cog
> in a machine or an item or organisation. Nabokov's Principal has triumphed
> absolutely.
>
>
>