“To return to my lecturing days: I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase “sincere and simple” - “Flaubert writes with a style which is always simple and sincere” - under the impression that this was the greatest compliment payable to prose or poetry. When I struck the phrase out, which I did with such rage in my pencil that it ripped the paper, the student complained that this was what teachers had always taught him: “Art is simple, art is sincere.” Someday I must trace this vulgar absurdity to its source. A schoolmarm in Ohio? A progressive ass in New York? Because, of course, art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.” — Vladimir Nabokov
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 17:53:01 +0000
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