Subject
VN/JJ and Naughty Postcards
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> Prof. Boyd and I exchanged some off-VN-forum ponders on the possible influence
> of naughty, seaside postcards (a very Brit genre dating back to Donald McGill
> circa 1904*) on a passage in Ulysses. I’ve come across a direct link to
> Nabokov which justifies on-forum mention.
>
> Towards the end of Король, дама, валет (English King, Queen, Knave, translated
> by Dmitri Nabokov), King Dreyer is at the Seaview Hotel in the Baltic Resort
> of Gravitch with Queen Martha and her Knavish lover Franz. Dreyer is window
> shopping and describes several comic postcards with unmistakably McGillesque
> risqué themes.
> VN wrote KQK while sojourning with Véra in the Baltic (1928), and the reported
> postcards are matched by many wonderfully teasing autobiographical incidents
> and allusions in the novel (see, inter alia, Brian Boyd’s VN bios).
>
> My only immediate access to KQK is the audio-book, so I can’t cite
> chapter/verse. The book is hiding in some nearby black hole. I plan further
> explorations, but it seems clear from the compositional dates of Ulysses and
> KQK that both Joyce and Nabokov were more-than-familiar with, and exploited,
> the McGill tradition of nudg-nudge, saucy humour.
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle.
>
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McGill;
> http://www.iwight.com/placestogo/default.asp?ls=rec&recid=1839&opt=
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> of naughty, seaside postcards (a very Brit genre dating back to Donald McGill
> circa 1904*) on a passage in Ulysses. I’ve come across a direct link to
> Nabokov which justifies on-forum mention.
>
> Towards the end of Король, дама, валет (English King, Queen, Knave, translated
> by Dmitri Nabokov), King Dreyer is at the Seaview Hotel in the Baltic Resort
> of Gravitch with Queen Martha and her Knavish lover Franz. Dreyer is window
> shopping and describes several comic postcards with unmistakably McGillesque
> risqué themes.
> VN wrote KQK while sojourning with Véra in the Baltic (1928), and the reported
> postcards are matched by many wonderfully teasing autobiographical incidents
> and allusions in the novel (see, inter alia, Brian Boyd’s VN bios).
>
> My only immediate access to KQK is the audio-book, so I can’t cite
> chapter/verse. The book is hiding in some nearby black hole. I plan further
> explorations, but it seems clear from the compositional dates of Ulysses and
> KQK that both Joyce and Nabokov were more-than-familiar with, and exploited,
> the McGill tradition of nudg-nudge, saucy humour.
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle.
>
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McGill;
> http://www.iwight.com/placestogo/default.asp?ls=rec&recid=1839&opt=
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/