Nizhe vsiakoi kritiki

[Beyer, Tom]

Thank you, Kathleen, for saying it succinctly and so well. I too am
disturbed by the tone of the review and the harshness of the rhetoric. Carol
along with others preserved the memory of Bakhtin, when to do so was not a
public option in the Soviet Union.

        I seem to remember (and someone will  know the exact reference) that
Nabokov believed that reading reviews told one little about the book under
review, but could provide insight into the intelligence and character of the
reviewer. Reviews ought not to be the place for reviewers to reveal their
own brilliance; they are instead an opportunity to present a book and its
content to a potential audience.  Few books on Russian literature or
criticism can hope to sell more than few hundred copies. We do ourselves no
service when we discourage libraries, departments, colleagues or students
from purchasing a book that really does make a substantial and significant
contribution to our limited knowledge of these things Russian.

        Thomas Beyer
        Professor of Russian
        Middlebury College


> ----------
> From:         Kathleen Parthe
> Reply To:     SEELangs: Slavic & E. European Languages & literatures list
> Sent:         Tuesday, June 8, 1999 3:17 PM
> To:   SEELANGS at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
> Subject:      Nizhe vsiakoi kritiki
>
>         The subject header of Dmitry Khanin's message of June 7, with its
> gleeful announcement of the trashing of another Slavist's book, surely
> marks a low point in this list. That he chose as the object of his attack
> Caryl Emerson, one of the most intellectually and personally generous
> people in the profession, makes the tone particularly inappropriate.
> Criticism is meant to examine new publications and offer professional
> opinions, positive or negative. When it becomes a blood sport, we all
> lose.
>
>
>                                 Kathleen Parthe
>
> Kathleen Parthe
> Associate Professor of Russian
> Director of Russian Studies
> 424 Lattimore Hall/MLC/Box 270082
> University of Rochester
> Rochester, NY 14627-0082
> Phone:(716) 275-4176(O),(716) 271-8433(H)
> Fax:(716) 273-1097
> E-mail: parthe at uhura.cc.rochester.edu
>