"the bridge between Vladimir Nabokow and David Foster Wallace"

[Mark Kohut]

GR lacks Nabokov's  sometimes-hermetic beauty and Wallace's sometimes depthless affective ness. 


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> On Oct 27, 2014, at 5:54 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> And yet, there is some truth, half truth perhaps,  in what the
> reviewer says. Isn't there? If it were utter trash we wouldn't bother
> trashing it. Right? One might reject the comparison out right. It's
> boring or useless. But there is something there in this:
> 
> "GR lacks Nabokov's beauty and Wallace's affectiveness."
> 
> Maybe.
> 
> On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Heikki Raudaskoski
> <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi> wrote:
>> 
>> Pale Fire came up on the list, once again. This brought to mind the
>> review of the Finnish translation of GR, "Painovoiman sateenkaari",
>> that came out a month ago in Helsingin Sanomat, the leading Finnish
>> newspaper. http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/a1411741137138
>> 
>> When one reads the uniformly poor review, it becomes obvious that the
>> reviewer hasn't really read either the original or the translation.
>> He has very little to say about GR itself.
>> 
>> At one point he writes, in a quite patronizing tone, that GR is "said
>> to form [by whom, I wonder] the bridge between Vladimir Nabokov and
>> David Foster Wallace". Heh heh.
>> 
>> The reviewer has in mind the novels Pale Fire, Ada, and Infinite Jest.
>> Nabokov and Wallace are his favorites, not Pynchon: GR lacks Nabokov's
>> beauty and Wallace's affectiveness. (AFAIK, the guy is working on a
>> longer study on Wallace, so he may have some vested interest to set up
>> the boring confrontation between TRP and DWF again.)
>> 
>> What doesn't surprise me at all is that they chose a clown like him to
>> review GR. The standard of literary reviews in HS is low nowadays.
>> 
>> 
>> Heikki
>> 
>> 
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l