been stated more succinctly-which
says almost nothing about Lolita's
chief literary qualities, its stylistic
brio
and its humor? The genres that one
would expect our age to excel in, for
all sorts of historic-cultural reasons
that the readers of
Partisan Review
know as well as I do, are rhetoric and
comedy. Why, then, when they appear,
do we not recognize them?
Dwight Macdonald
Sir:
My attention has been called to
the "London Letter" by a Mr. Alvarez,
in your Summer issue 1959.
In this, Mr. Alvarez,
a
writer of in–
sipid, mewling, flabby but cramped
verse, and puking pert little criticisms,
said, "Like Ginsberg, Logue belongs, as
Dr. Leavis said of the Sitwells, more
to the history of publicity than to the
history of poetry."
Dr. Leavis did not say this of "the
Sitwelb"-but of
Edith
Sitwell-my–
self.
It does not matter
what
Dr. Leavis
says-he is always wincing and whim–
pering about something, and, by now,
has been insulting to many of the most
important writers of our time. But we
shall always cherish him for the orien>–
tal magnificence of his prose style,
which caused the writer of a letter to
the
Times Literary Supplement,
a while
ago, to enquire if he had been at school
in India.
Mr. Alvarez, however, is a different
matter. He is not even funny, he is
just dull. He does not belong
t8
the
history of anything at all, and he can–
not be put in his place, because he has
not got one-not of any kind.
But I have, however, taught him
his little manners, in a review of a
book written by him. The review was
published in
The Sunday Times
(of
London). It was kindly, and I ended
by saying that Mr. Alvarez is young,
and may do better-at least I hoped
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LETTERS OF
S
~ri1J4'?o~rg
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SOI'tS
667
