Sunday, September 07, 2008

Two views ...

... of Miss Emily: The Woman in White. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

3 comments:

  1. Joyce Carol Oates concludes this review of two recent biographies involving Emily Dickinson with the following:

    "Appropriately, Benfey's ending isn't a critical summing-up or a statement of fact but an evocative poetry: 'The window is open. The perch is empty. The bird has flown.'"

    WT . . . Huh?

    Questionable whether the grammatical error ought to be flagged (as niggle-nitzing); but, her assertion's just plain wrong since, that "evocative poetry" is, in fact, a telegraphically compressed up-summing, one that contains a lovely group of allusive word-ploys, IMO.

    (And, what's with the mind-numbingly repetitive use of the adjective, "evocative," anyway? JCO must have a thesaurus, given her mountainous outpourings of novels, essays, editorials, reviews, et.ilk.?)

    Why the NYRB chose to offer her this pair of books to analyse and concurrently recommend (or not) to readers escapes my understanding. What am I missing? I can think of a good dozen reviewers who actually might have assessed both with sensitivity and sensibility.

    (IIRC, there was a lovely take on Wineman's book inked a couple months ago, an incisive and enlightening one, in the NYT, perhaps; or, was it VF or TNY? No matter.)

    So many words; such a precious space; and, IMO, an inexcusable waste proving the so-called reviewer's terminally lost in thought (since, for her, it's clearly unfamiliar territory).

    ReplyDelete
  2. WOW. Thank you! Man-oh-Manna, Dave, you're stun-wonderfully GOOD! Yep, it *was* The New Yorker; and, thank you for not correcting my Wineapple / Wineman error. I have been *so* focussed on form (with learning the posting as opposed to the commenting ropes), I think my brain's cell's gone straight to hell's hell. I do have a good friend with last name of Wineman's my lame blame.

    Now, it's way past my dread-time; but, I have been so epiblogue rattled, I don't think I could've slept earlier even I'd wanted to do so; a first for one very nap-friendly dame we shall not mention by name. Natch, the roofers are supposed to be here at some ungawdly hour later this morning. Just my g'luck, g'night . . .

    ReplyDelete