Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 13:17:47 -0800 (PST)
From: Wolf Factory <wolf_factory-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: More on Spivak


A wonderful exposé! I hope your review gets published.


--- "laohu - -AT-Home" <laohu-AT-home.com> wrote:
> I’ve been following the general comments the past
> few weeks on this list pro and con Spivak’s
> scholarship and writing style.
> 
> Early last year (2000), already having encountered
> her name repeatedly on this list, I decided to read
> something of hers to try to find out why everybody
> seemed so enamored of her writings. I bought "The
> Spivak Reader" edited by Donna Landry and Gerald
> Maclean [Routledge: New York and London, 1996] in
> order to get an overview.
> 
> It was quite a revelation.
> 
> Yes, I did find her incredibly opaque but attributed
> much of it to my lack of familiarity with the
> materials she was discussing – until I came to
> chapter 7 ("Echo"), her discussion of the Echo and
> Narcissus episode in Ovid’s "Metamporphoses". Since
> this particular text and its literary antecedents
> back to Homer were thoroughly familiar to me, I felt
> more than qualified to understand it. It is, in my
> carefully considered opinion, a highly problematic
> essay, and one to whose procedures and analyses I
> respectfully take the strongest exception.
> 
> I sat down in the middle of last year and, using
> highly specific examples and commentary, wrote a
> loooong review of the entire book simply for my own
> edification and clarification. My comments have
> never been published, and indeed never will be. But
> I offer for personal use two versions of it to
> readers of this list who may be interested in coming
> to grips with some focused specifics about her work
> rather than the often vague and rather
> impressionistic comments that pop up on this list.
> 
> The longer version (Spivak-1 below) contains my
> entire ‘review’, including my observations on her
> use of language etc. And I admit openly and without
> irony that it may well be my own intellectual
> deficit that unfairly prompts many if not most of
> those remarks. This, however, is not the case in my
> review of the Echo chapter (Spivak-2 below).
> 
> For what it is worth, here is where you can go to
> the reviews; click on these addresses or paste them
> into your browser and download to your hard disk
> before opening and reading (my Norton
> anti-virus-detector states that neither one contains
> any viruses):
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.avalon.net/~laohu/Spivak-1.doc
> 
> http://www.avalon.net/~laohu/Spivak-2.doc
> 
> 
> 
> If I am being unfair or unreasonable to Spivak’s
> text in my reviews, please feel free to let me know
> in reasoned detail why and how – but please, not
> something reductive like, "Outrageous!" v.sim. I’d
> be happy to hear from readers, perhaps more easily
> by e-mail if you don’t want to use the list.
> 
> Cordially,
> 
> j
> 
> e b holtsmark - aka jack     äran först och främst
> laohu-AT-avalon.net               esse quam videri
>                                           aien
> aristeuein
> 


===="All the wolves in the wolf factory paused at noon, 
for a moment of silence."
........from laughing Gravy by John Ashbery.
---------------------------------------------------------
Looking for something good and original to read?
Check out: http://www.mesopotamia.free-online.co.uk

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