Fwd: Men Explain Lolita To Me

Fri Dec 18 17:44:43 CST 2015

Whoops, meant this for the list, not just Becky.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 3:43 PM
Subject: Re: Men Explain Lolita To Me
To: Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>

Her book on Muybridge (sp?), River of Shadows, is excellent too.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 2:44 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:

> YAY, Laura !!!!!   Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap!!!
>
> And now y’all got me interested I’m reading  "Men Explain Things To Me”
> (2014) and it is so funny - excellent so far.  Years ago I read Solnit’s
> book on walking -  ??? -  and it was boring so I didn’t really watch for
> her.  I’m not big on reading feminist books but this one is interesting -
>
> She is very careful about not lumping all men in any particular category -
> that said,  90% of murders are committed by men and I personally have not
> heard that the stats for women murdering or raping men/boys has skyrocketed.
>
> Bek
>
>
> > On Dec 18, 2015, at 10:18 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> >
> > Did it occur to anyone that Solnits wrote this essay for women readers?
> I didn't find anything she said particularly new or earth-shaking, though
> it was well-phrased. Certainly nothing that should have ignited this
> hysterical, hostile response.
> >
> > She says: "... the western world has held up a mirror to them [white
> men] for so long—and turns compliant women into mirrors reflecting them
> back twice life size, Virginia Woolf noted. The rest of us get used to the
> transgendering and cross-racializing of our identities as we invest in
> protagonists like Ishmael or Dirty Harry or Holden Caulfield." Is that
> really controversial? Girls all over the world were thrilled with Harry
> Potter. Does anyone here truly believe that boys all over the world would
> have become obsessive fans of a "Harriet Potter" series?
> >
> > Suppose a black male writer had made the same points about white
> readers, male and female? Would he be described here on the list as: "An
> angry [replace "bint" with some moderate racial epithet] with a bludgeon
> looking to make [his] bones Arkansasing the justifiably celebrated work of
> a dead white guy"? or "Great Googly Moogly but [he] is an insufferable,
> sanctimonious, hyper-inflated-with-a-sense-of-self-importance piece of
> work."?
> >
> > Much as Solnits doesn't like being "mansplained" to, I think there are
> men [not all men, as Solnits makes perfectly clear in her essay]who really
> can't hack having a woman stating an opinion they disagree with, and they
> pretty much flip out when they encounter it.
> >
> > I do think the essay is inconsequential in the sense that it was a
> response to the hostile response to a previous essay she'd written. She's a
> columnist, and has to churn this stuff out quickly. If she'd sat down to
> write a long, thoughtful literary analysis of Nabokov's work, this would
> not have been the result. Dammit, Jim, she's a cultural critic, not an
> academic literary professor. Sure, the phrase "privilobliviousness" is
> cringe-worthy. I guess she was just fed up with using the phrase "white
> male privilege" and wanted to save herself the two taps of the space bar it
> entails. Harpers doesn't have a huge readership, and most people are
> blithely unaware of the minor flame-war her essay launched.
> >
> > Do Brits and Yanks have different perspectives? Do black American and
> white Americans have different perspectives? Do men and women have
> different perspectives? Yes.
> >
> > Some female perspective:
> >
> > I've been extremely uncomfortable with the number of instances where
> Pynchon blithely depicts men having sex with girls, or just generally
> sexualizes young girls. Not just poor Bianca, but Lucille in V., the
> youngest Boer daughter in M&D, Merle joking about how young Dally should
> have sex [don't have the page-reference handy], and Japonica Fenway in IV.
> Nothing in BE (maybe Jackson's teenaged girlfriends made it too
> embarrassing to write about?). I know there are claims that the Bianca
> episodes are "thematic," and that male children are sexually abused in GR,
> but it all seems a little too obsessive on Pynchon's part. GR is still my
> favorite book, though. I identify with Slothrop.
> >
> > My mother adored Anna Karenina, and wore through a number of copies. But
> she decried the ending. She could pinpoint one sentence where the book
> "turned." Don't have the exact quote, but it involved Vronsky looking at
> "the dying woman," i.e. Anna. From then on, my mother said that the reader
> was distanced from Anna. Though Anna didn't die in that scene, Tolstoy had
> sentenced her to death. My mother mentally rewrote the final scene: Anna
> goes to the railway station and takes a train to Paris to start a new life.
> The End."
> >
> > I consider Kubrick one of the greatest directors of all time (who
> wouldn't?). But I've only seen Clockwork Orange once. In the theater, there
> was laughter during the Singing In the Rain rape sequence. My male date
> felt he had to "explain" what Kubrick was conveying in the scene. I didn't
> then and I don't now give a flying fuck what Kubrick's intentions were - I
> will never, ever watch that again.Life's too short to put myself through
> that kind of pain. I've seen 2001: A Space Odyssey (not what you'd call a
> chick flick) probably about 15 times.
> >
> > What this shows is that feminists [Solnits, me, my mother,etc.] can call
> out sexism where they see it, even in their favorite works of art, but
> still understand its context and appreciate, or even love the work it's
> contained in.
> >
> > Final question: Who here has seen Diary of a Teenage Girl? I consider it
> the best film of the year. How would the story play if written from the
> man's POV?
> >
> > Laura
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> >
> > From: matthew cissell
> >
> > Sent: Dec 18, 2015 4:39 AM
> >
> > To: "kelber at mindspring.com"
> >
> > Subject: Re: Men Explain Lolita To Me
> >
> >
> >
> > I don' think it inconsequential, on the contrary the conversation and
> topic strike me as quite important. I just don't think it's the best way to
> procede, in part because dehistorcizing the novel and then generalizing the
> male comments and extending them to all men is not accurate or useful.
> > No nerves struck here, just incredulous that this is what gets over the
> bar. Where is Simone De Beauvoir? Or even bell hooks?
> > One may sympathize with her experience and sentiments, but that does not
> gain agreement.
> > What do you think of the piece?
> > ciaomcps I'm not wearing my panties right now, still in my nightgown
> which does get rumpled sitting in this chair.
> > On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 5:37 AM, kelber at mindspring.com  wrote:
> > With so many guys getting their panties in a twist over an
> inconsequential essay, it seems the writer must have hit a nerve.
> > Laura
> >
> > Mark Thibodeau  wrote:
> >
> > Punishing myself by reading this latest Solnit on men "explaining"
> > Lolita to her and I've come across what must be the most painfully
> > awful neologism of an era and a medium that is stuffed to the bursting
> > with awful neologisms: "privelobliviousness". Sweet Christ what a
> > mediocre, one-track mind this person has.
> >
> > J
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 10:00 PM, David Morris  wrote:
> >> HH wasn't empathetic because he was obsessive. One usurps the other,
> ergo
> >> failure. HH failed in scores of other traits for the same root cause.
> The
> >> beauty of Lolita is HH's ability to elist our empathy with his
> obsession.
> >>
> >> David Morris
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thursday, December 17, 2015, John Bailey  wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Solnit praises Lolita and calls it "that masterpiece of Humbert
> >>> Humbert’s failure of empathy". Which someone would Arkansas my work
> >>> that way.
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 1:11 PM, Charles Albert
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> An angry bint with a bludgeon looking to make her bones Arkansasing
> the
> >>>> justifiably celebrated work of a dead white guy?
> >>>>
> >>>> Don't see that every day.
> >>>>
> >>>> If you want a truly stimulating  and exquisitely balanced
> investigation
> >>>> of
> >>>> the same question I recommend Byatt's Possession.
> >>>>
> >>>> love,
> >>>>
> >>>> cfa
> >>>>
> >>>> On Dec 17, 2015 8:59 PM, "John Bailey"  wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If you approach pop literary criticism with the same standards you
> >>>>> expect of Kantian philosophy you may end up with a reasonable amount
> >>>>> of stomach trouble.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 12:24 PM, Tommy Pinecone
> >>>>>
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>> I had originally extended that message to cover that point but then
> >>>>>> decided
> >>>>>> to take it away.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> To show the weight of thought that needs to go behind a conclusion.
> >>>>>> Kant
> >>>>>> is
> >>>>>> astoundingly painstaking, as you likely know. That's why I
> >>>>>> recommended a
> >>>>>> short introduction, the excerpts can be shocking to someone not used
> >>>>>> to
> >>>>>> it,
> >>>>>> it is an education you are not likely to find anywhere else apart
> >>>>>> from
> >>>>>> first
> >>>>>> hand in Kant. I could just as easily recommended some of Aristotle's
> >>>>>> work,
> >>>>>> but Kant is more illustrative of the point.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Wittgenstein's big ideas and posthumous work are constructive in a
> >>>>>> similar
> >>>>>> way.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On 18 Dec 2015 01:09, "Danny Weltman"
> >>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> What in Kant's first critique do you find helpful for hitting on "a
> >>>>>>> fast
> >>>>>>> track way to make someone who is uneducated aware of the blatant
> >>>>>>> flaws
> >>>>>>> in
> >>>>>>> certain ideas and movements that are just unsustainable, and
> somehow
> >>>>>>> having
> >>>>>>> their day the past few years?"
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 5:03 PM, Tommy Pinecone
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> This is why I make it a deliberate priority not to go on Twitter
> or
> >>>>>>>> to
> >>>>>>>> follow any new intellectual voices.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Every time it is some unfamiliar, alleged authority voicing a loud
> >>>>>>>> opinion that's appointed a flashy title; for some reason Twitter
> is
> >>>>>>>> frequently mentioned along the way.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> I hope the majority of you can see through this pettiness. It's
> >>>>>>>> unfortunate that we are swamped with the hack work and profound
> >>>>>>>> blanketed
> >>>>>>>> hate in modern academia, it is however a fortunate thing that we
> >>>>>>>> can
> >>>>>>>> merely
> >>>>>>>> look away and concentrate on human issues instead of coining new
> >>>>>>>> derogatory
> >>>>>>>> terms and stirring up the rabble with a short article.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> I often wonder how different these outlooks would be if these
> >>>>>>>> people
> >>>>>>>> were
> >>>>>>>> introduced to literature in a different way, free from ideology
> and
> >>>>>>>> identity-that is an unbiased, philosophical way. I make it a hard
> >>>>>>>> point with
> >>>>>>>> any aspiring student to start off with a short introduction to
> >>>>>>>> Kant's
> >>>>>>>> primary Critique and a short introduction to Wittgenstein's
> >>>>>>>> thought;
> >>>>>>>> no
> >>>>>>>> doubt it is an anomalous approach, but it's a fast track way to
> >>>>>>>> make
> >>>>>>>> someone
> >>>>>>>> who is uneducated aware of the blatant flaws in certain ideas and
> >>>>>>>> movements
> >>>>>>>> that are just unsustainable, and somehow having their day the past
> >>>>>>>> few
> >>>>>>>> years.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> We shouldn't have to pause to think of these things when there are
> >>>>>>>> bigger
> >>>>>>>> issues than female characters not being put in the center of the
> >>>>>>>> stage. What
> >>>>>>>> if I wanted to pen an article on how I wasn't happy with the lack
> >>>>>>>> of
> >>>>>>>> empathy
> >>>>>>>> Beckett shows in all of his works, to individuals of both genders
> >>>>>>>> no
> >>>>>>>> less?
> >>>>>>>> Sure, the circumstances are different here, but not dramatically.
> >>>>>>>> It's
> >>>>>>>> simply absurd. I struggle to believe these type of things when I
> >>>>>>>> see
> >>>>>>>> them
> >>>>>>>> being taken so seriously by so many. Makes one feel hopeless,
> >>>>>>>> especially
> >>>>>>>> when these are still the early years of the internet and the
> >>>>>>>> loudest
> >>>>>>>> voices
> >>>>>>>> are reaching aspiring students through social media poisoning
> their
> >>>>>>>> nascent
> >>>>>>>> opinions and thoughts.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On 17 Dec 2015 20:51, "Matthew Taylor"
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Thoughts on Rebecca Solnit's latest?
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> http://lithub.com/men-explain-lolita-to-me/
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> -
> >>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>> -
> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> > -
> > 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/?listpynchon-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20151218/3c4b21b9/attachment.html>