AtD / TRP / feminist type stuff

[terrance terrance]

In one of his famous lectures, Nabokov gives some pretty sound advice to 
good readers. He says something like ... a good reader is an active and 
creative reader and a re-reader. That reading and re-reading supreme works 
of prose fiction so as to understand them as the author created them is the 
only way to go about the business of reading any book worth rereading. It's 
only after the very difficult and thrilling work of reading and rereading a 
book like Moby-Dick or Pale Fire that one can begin to use the tools of the 
trade to connect the book with other great works and other interesting 
things. I thinl Nabokov implies, or perhaps he states explicitly, that to do 
otherwise is to give an unfair advantage to the reader at the expense of the 
author. How Prophetic! Today we don't read much at all. Not fair to authors, 
but we're too busy. Today we simply don't have time to understand a book as 
big and as complex as most of the books TRP, other guys and gals like him,  
write. Today we need a book that's made for us. I'm a Feminist. How are the 
chicks in his new book? I'm a Marxist. How are the workers? I'm a Sci-Fi 
guy. How are the worlds juxtaposed? Back in 1973-74 things were different. 
The novel, although dozens of great ones were being published, was dying. So 
were lots of people. People were getting high and rock and roll was never 
going to die. But the novel was dying and it had little to do with war or 
drugs or sex. It seems to me that TRP and his kind did everything in their 
power to kill the novel.   They failed. In fact, GR wond TRP The National 
Book Award. He didn't win because he described gross sex acts. He did 
something we no longer have time for. So get out your tools and hammer away. 
Who has time to read a book like AtD anyway?

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