EDNote: I do not know who these out-clevering, out-egoing people can
possibly be. ~SB
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/blogs/home.cfm?uid=15&d=%7Bts%20'2010-08-03%2000%3A00%3A00'%7D
Tuesday, August 03, 2010 • 12:00 AM Post
a Comment
How to Kill Literature
posted by James Heflin
Vladimir Nabokov is among my favorite writers. I love his complex word
games, his layers wrapped in layers of self-reference, all of it
delivered in gorgeous prose. He was better at writing in his second
language than, I think, any of us could be at Russian.
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.
I think Nabokov's Pale Fire is a work of utter brilliance--it
sits upon my "bookshelf of genius" beside Joyce and Melville, forming a
sort of holy trinity. [. . .]