Men Explain Lolita To Me

[Mark Kohut]

Okay, I'll be ridiculous. Not the first time. I'm not going to address
the largest implications of the question as you do.

i'm going to take small philosophical baby steps. If "art makes life"
is at least partly true for one person. And that person acts
"better' because of it, then the statement is true.
If "art makes life' is true of more than one person and they act
better because of it, then the statement is true and somehow the world
is different because of that therefore.......

One question is How many are so effected? And what does it lead them
to see and do differently? And how does that matter in your largest
questions.



On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 1:02 PM, Peter M. Fitzpatrick
<petopoet at gmail.com> wrote:
>      I would only take issue with her final assertion that "art makes life".
> I am none too sure about the truth of that, especially in our modern era,
> where access to means of expression are at an unprecedented level, at least
> in Western societies. More than one author has despaired at the idea or hope
> that they could possibly change society through their writing. The
> Mapplethorpe controversy could be read as an effort to battle gay rights as
> much as artistic expression. Picasso's "Guernica" is a masterpiece, but I
> have serious doubts if it ever changed any country's views on the use of
> technological weapons that do not discriminate between combatants and
> civilians. James Joyce and William S. Burroughs helped to change obscenity
> rulings in American, perhaps, but I don't think this is what Solnit means by
> "art makes life".
>      Plato wanted to banish the poets, assuredly,so that his
> philosopher-kings could priviledge reason and law over emotion and
> imagination. I believe Heidegger had a lot to say on this aspect of our
> cultural heritage (even if he was prone to utter idiocy in other areas,
> notably fascism). Perhaps this is another aspect of Solnit's piece that
> raises questions to me - why does it seem so humorless, intellectual, if not
> a little unclear on what she does privilege in literature? That she uses
> this charge of "lack of humor" to chide others does bring her own seeming
> lack to the foreground, at least to me.
>      "Lolita' is provocative, original, and must strike some note that is
> essentially true to readers - books do not enter the "canon" of modern
> literature through any other mysterious vetting process than reception and
> response. Solnit can criticize it as much as she likes, it isn't going
> anywhere. Generally, my main criticism of her piece is that it too strongly
> influenced by modern literary studies efforts at de-construction and
> Derridean disdain of the "phallo -centrism" of the so-called "Logos".
> Somewhere in there, I think men are supposed to feel bad. My own zen moment
> in modern literary critical studies was when we were covering  Lacan's
> interpretation of Poe's "The Purloined Letter". I suddenly realized that I
> could read Poe's short story one million times and I would Never, no, Never
> see whatever it was that Lacan was seeing there.
>
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 11:06 AM, Charles Albert <cfalbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Thesis?
>>
>> Or long exhausted trope?
>>
>>
>> love,
>> cfa
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 11:52 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Typical of Solnit: witty,engaging, sharp but balanced, and a pleasure to
>>> read. Many of the responses seem to prove her thesis with unexpected ease.
>>> > On Dec 17, 2015, at 3:50 PM, Matthew Taylor
>>> > <matthew.taylor923 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Thoughts on Rebecca Solnit's latest?
>>> >
>>> > http://lithub.com/men-explain-lolita-to-me/
>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l