Quote:
Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
I almost hesitate to raise this, but I have a category question. In the category of European lit, we do now have one novel that was written in English by an American Citizen--I'm talking about Lolita.
I only bring it up to clarify what's possible for me in this and other categories in the future. Nabokov was trilingual, and a very accomplished writer in Russian as well, but was most famous for his works in English, produced after he settled in the U.S. in 1940. He became a U.S. citizen in '48, and published Lolita in '55.
It may seem like I'm splitting hairs--and again, I'm not trying to play "gotcha"-- I'm content to go whichever way everyone else does. But it does raise the issue of whether, say Rohinton Mistry or Salman Rushdie could fit into the World Lit category as just one example. My feeling is that Mistry is Canadian and Rushdie is British.
I guess I'm just hoping for a clarification--how do we classify a writer as part of one or another category, when the categories are geographic? Do we go with place of birth, in which case Ezra Pound is an American, or nationality of choice, in which case he's a Brit?
Also to clarify-- Lolita was an awesome pick--and I am in no way pursuing a personal vendetta against octothorp for stealing all my books.
(But for the record, he did take 2 of them.  ) |
I think it's worthwhile to discuss this and come up with some more clearly defined rules. My rationale was that Nabokov wrote only four of his 17 books while in America (the first nine in Germany and France, the last four (five, if Laura ever gets published) in Switzerland), so I have a hard time counting anything that he's produced as being part of American Literature, especially when all of the themes and styles fit far more with European lit than American. He's really a European through-and-through, who moved to the US to escape persecution, taught European literature while in America, and then returned to Europe as soon as he had enough financial security. I'm content to change it to an american novel if there's that consensus, but to me it really doesn't fit there.