Men Explain Lolita To Me

[Mark Thibodeau]

As some of you already know, I occasionally create precis for various
magazines that I've read, including Harper's, which I publish at my
blog under the title "Jerky Reads it For You!" The last one I did was
for the June Harper's, and it can be found here:

http://dailydirtdiaspora.blogspot.ca/2015/11/jerky-reads-it-for-you-harpers-june-2015.html

Solnit comes up in the first two sections, which I reproduce for you here:


LETTERS

Sparks fly in this issue’s letters pages, as Citigroup’s Executive
Vice President for Global Public Affairs Ed Skyler writes in to berate
both Harper’s and Andrew Cockburn, author of April’s report “Saving
the Whale Again”, about how mean and nasty and unfair their portrayal
of Citibank/Ctigroup was. Cockburn responds witheringly. Not so
effective is the doleful Rebecca Solnit, who’s April Easy Chair moan,
titled “Abolish High School”, led to two replies calling her out for
writing a “demeaning” and “pedestrian” essay. Her self-defense, in
which she accuses one of her critics of spouting “the hallucinatory
stuff of men’s-rights-movement rants”, was almost as lackluster.

EASY CHAIR

Oh boy... "Shooting Down Man the Hunter"? This one is by Solnit again,
and again we get a shrill, sour, sanctimonious and intellectually
crippled polemic from a writer who isn’t half as smart as she thinks
she is, scolding a readership that is far more mature, thoughtful and
discriminating than she presumes. Oh, and she also manages to dig up
“a perfect specimen of a men’s-rights ranter” from (ahem) “social
media”. With her career at Harper’s so far marked by bitter whining, a
love of straw man arguments, and a near total lack of wit, I suppose
it should come as no surprise that she once again ends up embarrassing
herself rather badly. The sooner Harper’s drops or demotes her, the
better.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 7:46 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> Great Googly Moogly but Solnit is an insufferable, sanctimonious,
> hyper-inflated-with-a-sense-of-self-importance piece of work.
>
> She's single-handedly ruining Harper's for me, and a few others I'd wager.
>
> J
>
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 7:37 PM, Ray Easton <raymond.lee.easton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> When I say 'Nabakov does not care a fig...' I am not referring to what the
>> man in his "non-fic life" did or did not believe.  (I don't care about such
>> things.)  I mean that his novels have no moral viewpoint and present no
>> moral lessons.
>>
>> HH "gets what he deserves" -- you sound like John Ray, Jr., PhD.
>>
>> Ray
>>
>> Sent with AquaMail for Android
>> http://www.aqua-mail.com
>>
>>
>> On December 17, 2015 5:35:40 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> yeah, Nabokov greatly dissed 'morality' in fiction all his non-fic
>>> life...
>>> but he did believe in themes and human goodness and badness..
>>>
>>> some take Nabokov's constant dissing of 'morality' as part-act (against
>>> lousy, sentimental poshlost fiction) and part unreliable narrator...
>>>
>>> Anyway, he recognized love and death and themes related to and life
>>> and sense perceptions and
>>> so much more in his own
>>> and in others' fictions.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 5:50 PM, Ray Easton
>>> <raymond.lee.easton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Morality -- Nabakov does not care a fig about morality.  And  the novel
>>>> is
>>>> designed to force us to identity not with Lokita, but with HH.
>>>>
>>>> Ray
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On December 17, 2015 4:40:02 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> we have to identify with Lolita because common human morality....to
>>>>> read it right....
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sent with AquaMail for Android
>>>> http://www.aqua-mail.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>>
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l