Subject
Re: RJ:"Time & Ebb" & "Conversations Piece" (fwd)
Date
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From: VESTERMAN@zodiac.rutgers.edu
I disagree with Roy Johnson's assessemnt of Time and Ebb
and with his assessment of VN on women. T&E not a "story?" Why
not--a story of time, a time capsule only now open for us. The
narrator sees not what is "new" but what is ordinary in America
of the 40s with "the stark lucidity of a future recollection--
you know, trying to see things as you will remember having
seen them?" (Lolita). Today, almost in the 21st century
the soda parlors and the scarab cabs and the labeled trees--
everything but the skyscrapers are gone, and we can see them
easily through the eyes of nostalgia rendered in advance by
a feat of imagination. The ordinary is now like what Borges
says of La Mancha. Cervantes used it as the epitome of
dullness to contrast with DQ's chivalric fantasies; now it
has itself romantic associations because of the Quixote.
As to "prejudices" against women, I don't see
how "the same thing" can be said as about Dr Johnson and
Scotsmen. What comes to my mind is what he said to objections
that the Senators in Julius Caesar weren't senatorial enough--
"he went to the Senate for what the Senate would supply him."
Further, I don't see that the (ugh) "love objects" in VN
are "idealized." They seem portrayed with all the tenderness
of individual endearment to me. As to sympathetic portrayals
of Germans, what about Kurt Dryer and Orlovius for starters.
As to supposing that the terrible events of this century
modified VN's view of Germany, whose views have they not
modified? Andrew Field's?
William Vesterman
should be Caesar
I disagree with Roy Johnson's assessemnt of Time and Ebb
and with his assessment of VN on women. T&E not a "story?" Why
not--a story of time, a time capsule only now open for us. The
narrator sees not what is "new" but what is ordinary in America
of the 40s with "the stark lucidity of a future recollection--
you know, trying to see things as you will remember having
seen them?" (Lolita). Today, almost in the 21st century
the soda parlors and the scarab cabs and the labeled trees--
everything but the skyscrapers are gone, and we can see them
easily through the eyes of nostalgia rendered in advance by
a feat of imagination. The ordinary is now like what Borges
says of La Mancha. Cervantes used it as the epitome of
dullness to contrast with DQ's chivalric fantasies; now it
has itself romantic associations because of the Quixote.
As to "prejudices" against women, I don't see
how "the same thing" can be said as about Dr Johnson and
Scotsmen. What comes to my mind is what he said to objections
that the Senators in Julius Caesar weren't senatorial enough--
"he went to the Senate for what the Senate would supply him."
Further, I don't see that the (ugh) "love objects" in VN
are "idealized." They seem portrayed with all the tenderness
of individual endearment to me. As to sympathetic portrayals
of Germans, what about Kurt Dryer and Orlovius for starters.
As to supposing that the terrible events of this century
modified VN's view of Germany, whose views have they not
modified? Andrew Field's?
William Vesterman
should be Caesar