Pynchon-l and Nabokv-l lists

[Mondegreen]

"I come not to bother, but to annoy."
          Jesus, in The Gospel According to Saint Eureen

The digests of the Pynchon-l list are being posted on the Nabokov-l list
for the duration of the Pale Fire discussion, and this intersection of the
lists prompts a comparison.

The Nabokov list must have a higher ratio of professionals to amateurs,
there no doubt being more Nabokov professionals than Pynchon professionals,
and so it has more queries and responses of a technical scholarly nature.
It also naturally has an international makeup and cosmopolitan flavor.

The Nabokov list is moderated, co-moderated actually, by two professionals,
i.e. professors of literature, who have Nabokov's writings as a specialty.
They're critics. Good ones.

The Nabokov forum has a dress code. Being moderated, it has no flames,
which is refreshing. (What are all they all about??)  But the Nabokov list
also lacks free-ranging discussion, and the ambience is therefore more
impersonal and uh stiff. No horsing around. No getting to know each other
as people over a beer at the end of the day. The professionals are (I think
this is fair, yes?) wary and, speaking for myself at least, so therefore
are the amateurs. Subscribing is not like sitting around in the
neighborhood pub or café, but attending or participating in an academic
forum.

A significant shortcoming, in my view, of the requirement to keep posts
sqarely on-topic is the result that the Nabokov forum cannot function as a
civic space. In these parlous times, with intelligent civic discussion
systematically excluded from the mass media, and, let's face it, with Big
Brother already here, in my opinion we should be using any and every
opportunity to nurture and enliven our civic life.

The civic role of author and critic was an issue of some interest to
Vladimir Nabokov who --and please correct me if I am wrong, someone--
however seemed to lack a sense of how citizens, acting in concert, can
bring their humane convictions to bear on the state, or work for the common
good. (No doubt Nabokov's limited civic-mindedness was due in part to the
calamitous result of the Russian revolution.) Still, political themes were
central to some of Nabokov's novels. The exclusion of "political" posts by
one of the narrators of the Nabokov list, who even declined to post an
essay by his co-moderator on Nabokov and Politics, may be in keeping with
Nabokov's own inclinations toward avoidance of "politics", but the result
is to exclude an area of significance to Nabokov studies and, more
seriously, to keep the list and its discussion disjuncted, in a way, from
the real world.

Anyway, to summarize: over there, where the average age of the posters is
no doubt older than it is here, the ground rules favor more dignity but
less fun. AFAIAC both is better.

Mondegreen
    "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear..."