A Reply to Amy Spungen

Nabokov Studies 4 (1997) Reply SARAH HERBOLD (Berkeley) A Reply to Amy Spungen Amy Spungen asserts that I have misrepresented Eysteinsson 's argument and pretended to disagree with him when I really agree with him; that I exploit Eysteinsson by using his discussion of modernism as a "disingenuous segue" into my analysis of Lolita rather tiian responding to that discussion on its own terms; and that I have misinterpreted Lolita. My essay was originally a twenty-minute talk, which I gave at one of the 1995 MLA International Nabokov Society panels. The editors of Nabokov Studies invited me to publish the talk as a Forum piece to spur discussion. Within the space of a few pages, I could not fully develop and substantiate arguments about either The Concept of Modernism or Lolita. Nonetheless, I do not believe I am guilty of the offenses Spungen has charged me with. My object was to take up the problem of Nabokovian "aesthetic bliss," which had been discussed at an MLA Nabokov panel the previous year, within the broader framework of controversy about whether modernist literature in general should be considered an escape into aestheticism or a form of political engagement. Eysteinsson takes up precisely this question. His 232 Nabokov Studies analysis, while perceptive and intelligent, is inconclusive and at times contradictory. It is not true, as Spungen implies, that Eysteinsson makes no overall argument about modernism. Concept represents his attempt not simply to define what modernism is but also to figure out how it can do a better job of being what he thinks it should be. This is Eysteinsson's root problem: he shifts back and forth between descriptive and prescriptive modes. He clearly believes that by disrupting established conventions of representation, modernist literary texts can, and should, pose a radical challenge to "capitalist-bourgeois ideology" (37) and its social practices. At times he even argues that this is what modernist art necessarily does: "Modernist discourse confronts die bourgeois self with its fragmented, decentered , and altogether damaged image" (170). However, he also concedes that many modernists did not view their projects this way (9-12) and that it is not clear how modernist texts challenge the status quo. He admits that modernist texts rarely formulate a positive critique of modernity, and he falls back to the position that modernism's potential to subvert social norms and envision a better world has simply not yet been realized (219, 222). But he belies even this tentative conclusion by asserting more than once that such a task may be impossible (197, 222). Thus, Eysteinsson's assessment of what modernism has actually been undercuts his definition of what it really is and should be. Moreover, his program for modernism leads him to shortchange his own perceptive analysis of modernism's paradoxes. Thus, I do not believe I ignored textual nuances in Concept, as Spungen alleges. Rather, I argued that what Spungen calls nuances are actually ambiguities. In other words, it is not my view of Eysteinsson's argument that is contradictory, but the argument itself. More particularly, I do not assert, as Spungen claims, that Eysteinsson declares that modernism has already "decisively accomplished an overthrow of existing literary structures." Indeed, I quote the same passage as Spungen, in which Reply 233 Eysteinsson argues mat modernism has not yet "decisively challenged prevalent signification systems of the cultural order." When Spungen charges that I have been "loose with a quote" in failing to note that Eysteinsson parenthetically interjects the word "impossibly" in a part of his sentence that I did not quote, she wrongly accuses me of misquotation. She also states that if I had "explored the implications of Eysteinsson's parenthetical aside," I would "not have concluded so roundly that he contradicts himself." In fact, I did not "roundly conclude" that Eysteinsson contradicts himself. I wrote that his "argument sometimes seems paradoxical to the point of self-contradiction. " Moreover, if I had fully explored the implications of Eysteinsson 's interjection of "(impossibly)" (Spungen does not specify what these implications are), I would have asserted more forcefully , not less so, that he contradicts himself. For, as I have explained above, Eysteinsson sometimes describes as impossible die very task...