"the bridge between Vladimir Nabokow and David Foster Wallace"

[Charles Albert]

"GR lacks Nabokov's beauty and Wallace's affectiveness."

"Affectiveness" is what frequently obliges me to put down a Pynchon work to
savor the "beauty".



love,
cfa


On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 6:54 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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