Word: author
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Visiting Committee of the Music Department is chaired by a member of the Board of Overseers, Gardner Cowles '25. Members include Leonard Bernstein '39; Alan Jay Lerner '40; Mrs. Henry Saltonstall; John W. Green '28, a Hollywood song-writer; and Donald J. Grout '35, author of a Music 1 textbook...
...least concerned with a "real" character, a pubescent boy named Ambrose. Ambrose goes to a seaside amusement park with his family, and there he gets lost in the funhouse. We are not sure if he really gets lost in the funhouse because we are made constantly aware of the author's hand pushing his characters around. Does Ambrose get lost, or does Barth make him get lost, or does Barth speculate about making him get lost? It is impossible to tell, which may be what the author is driving...
Barth's main fault in this book is that he is not concerned with human beings--that is, the human beings he creates--but rather with his own intrusive role as author. Mabye this is not wrong, but there can be no interest in the substance of the stories, because there is no substance, only style. For my money, that is not enough, and I find it annoying. It is easy, dear reader, to play games with the reader, usually addressed "dear reader" (or by Barth "dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard"), and extend these games until neither the dear reader...
...Nakobov is best when his characters bear the same watermark as himself. Some of his "made-up" characters are good, but they cannot compare to the boy in "First Love," the aging lover in "Spring in Fialta," Pnin, or Humbert Humbert of Lolita, all of whom clearly resemble the author. Lolita, that beautiful and hilarious love story, is still his greatest novel...
Nakogov's Congeries is not a "Complete Nakobov," but it does offer from that tomb-like quality of the Collected Works of Dead Dull Author. There is not much point in printing selections from novels, and the poems are better forgotten. For the reader who knows Nakobov, Congeries is redundant; for the reader who does not, the many paperback editions of Nabokov are a better introduction...