Subject
Re: Albion and black albinos
Date
Body
For what it's worth...this is from the VNCollation#3 (March 1, 1994) on
Zembla:
And speaking of John Updike, whose name often appears coupled with
Nabokov's: he claims in an interview appearing in the February 6 Calgary
Herald, that his new book Brazil
"... should appeal most to anyone who used to be pleased by Nabokov's
excursions into the semi-real. I'm not Nabokov, and there was much about
his fictional worlds that's a little constraining, but I did love the
attitude he brought to the art of fiction, a kind of detached, almost
scientific wish to do something new with this form. I don't see that
much anymore. The people who write novels now seem to be very serious
people who want to sell a million, or make a million at least...."
Brazil, according to a Financial Post article dated February 26, is only
the second Updike book to be set outside of the U.S. The other was The
Coup,
"...narrated by a francophone dictator--who sounded like Vladimir
Nabokov on Prozac...."
---Suellen Stringer-Hye
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
Behalf Of Stan Kelly-Bootle
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 12:19 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Albion and black albinos
On 30/01/2009 12:57, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
SK-B [ for the Irish, it's always PERFIDIOUS ALBION! The phrase is
indivisibule! [...] I quickly tired of Updike's explicit sex; after 2
promising rabbits! Did VN's admiration last longer than mine?[...] David
Foster Wallace's biting critique quoted in today's Times: "No US
novelist has mapped the solipsist's terrain better than Updike"]
JM: Solipsists, unite? I always thought Updike was the perfect example
of small communities' Biblical "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself". To recover VN's commentaries on Updike would take up some time
and I cannot recollect any specific reference to "admiration" on his
part. I didn't read the Rabbits (1-2-3-sorry Dad! -4-5-6) but I did
enjoy "Bech at Bay" and the first chapters of "Marry Me".
// reluctant snip
Jansy: want you to know that I love the "sorry Dad" bunny tale! Perhaps
we should add "Thou SHALT commit adultery," as Exodus 20:14 appears in
the infamously mis-printed "Sinner's Bible" of 1631! The same Bible
garbles the word "greatness" leading to the "great arse of God" (Deut.
5:24) Warning to printers and editors: the Sinner's Bible crew, some
claim, were hung, drawn and quartered. Updike's "Couples" certainly
ignored the commandment "Do not covet thy neighbour's ASS." But we
digress!
VN's "admiration" for Updike was expressed in an interview [exact ref.?
- the DATE would be significant!] when Nabokov was asked one of those
irritating questions: what he thought of contemporary American writers.
VN usually fenced off such questions with generalities (oft negative),
so I recall being surprised that VN favourably ventured a few real
names, inc. Updike's. I had just read Updike's 98%-glowing post-word to
the Penguin "Luzhin's Defens[c]e." That and other snippets indicated
some measure of mutual Updike/VN respect. I was only marginally
interested in such opinions. We must read and judge for ourselves.
Now here's an interesting find, or rather NON-FIND: I've just read
Updike's long intro to the new Everyman Library composite edition of the
Angstrom Quadrilogy. This intro appeared over 4-pages of small print,
"Updike on Updike," in the Times2, Jan 29, 2009, so I was spared the
expense of buying all them Rabbits! JU mentions many influences and
counter-influences: Dostoevsky, Joyce (esp. the female soliloquies!),
Roth, Mailer, Miller, Caldwell, JM Cain, DH Lawrence, ... NO VN, not a
murmur, but DRUM-ROLL ... Edmund Wilson ("one of my models in sexual
relations," referring specifically to Wilson's 1946 prosecution over
"Memoirs of Hecate County." Updike writes of restoring cuts in "Rabbit,
Run" as a result of the "censorship retreat" following the Lady
Chatterley and Tropic of Cancer trials. THERE IS STILL NO MENTION OF
NABOKOV, where, in the context of famous literary censorships, one might
surely have expected a ref to Lolita. And this silence, recall, from one
whose prose-style is often said to show Nabokovian influences? Funny, as
in Peculiar? Nil nisi Bonham Carter, as we say in Liverpool. (We have
our own malapropisms called "malapudlianisms.")
In the Feb 2, 2009 Sunday Times, we find a quote from Nicholson Baker's
memoir "U and I: A True Story." (Granta). Baker imagines BEFORE THE
EVENT the mourners gathered at Updike's fun[f]eral (inspired by Henry
James's account of the "popular manifestation" at Ralph Waldo Emerson's
funeral):
" ... In grieving for Updike, the sombre, predominantly female citizens
would be grieving for their own youthful sexual pasts, whose hardcore
cavortings were now insulated by wools and goose downs of period charm,
vague remorse, fuzzy remembrance, spousal forgiveness and an overall
sense of imperfect attempts at cutting loose; they would be mourning the
man who, by bringing a serious Prousto-Nabokovian, morally sensitive,
National Book Award-winning prose style to bear on the micromechanics of
physical lovemaking, first licensed their moans."
Bravo! Baker himself is cunningly Prousto-Nabokovian, n'est-ce pas? A
writer to watch out for.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
PS: I've worked on several text-search algorithms over the years (see
e.g., my "Assembly Language Programming for the MC6800x," SAMS/MacMillan
- search "Kelly-Bootle" on amazon). One challenge is handling such
Boolean search criteria as "Updike-but-NOT-Nabokov."
Search the archive
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Zembla:
And speaking of John Updike, whose name often appears coupled with
Nabokov's: he claims in an interview appearing in the February 6 Calgary
Herald, that his new book Brazil
"... should appeal most to anyone who used to be pleased by Nabokov's
excursions into the semi-real. I'm not Nabokov, and there was much about
his fictional worlds that's a little constraining, but I did love the
attitude he brought to the art of fiction, a kind of detached, almost
scientific wish to do something new with this form. I don't see that
much anymore. The people who write novels now seem to be very serious
people who want to sell a million, or make a million at least...."
Brazil, according to a Financial Post article dated February 26, is only
the second Updike book to be set outside of the U.S. The other was The
Coup,
"...narrated by a francophone dictator--who sounded like Vladimir
Nabokov on Prozac...."
---Suellen Stringer-Hye
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
Behalf Of Stan Kelly-Bootle
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 12:19 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Albion and black albinos
On 30/01/2009 12:57, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
SK-B [ for the Irish, it's always PERFIDIOUS ALBION! The phrase is
indivisibule! [...] I quickly tired of Updike's explicit sex; after 2
promising rabbits! Did VN's admiration last longer than mine?[...] David
Foster Wallace's biting critique quoted in today's Times: "No US
novelist has mapped the solipsist's terrain better than Updike"]
JM: Solipsists, unite? I always thought Updike was the perfect example
of small communities' Biblical "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself". To recover VN's commentaries on Updike would take up some time
and I cannot recollect any specific reference to "admiration" on his
part. I didn't read the Rabbits (1-2-3-sorry Dad! -4-5-6) but I did
enjoy "Bech at Bay" and the first chapters of "Marry Me".
// reluctant snip
Jansy: want you to know that I love the "sorry Dad" bunny tale! Perhaps
we should add "Thou SHALT commit adultery," as Exodus 20:14 appears in
the infamously mis-printed "Sinner's Bible" of 1631! The same Bible
garbles the word "greatness" leading to the "great arse of God" (Deut.
5:24) Warning to printers and editors: the Sinner's Bible crew, some
claim, were hung, drawn and quartered. Updike's "Couples" certainly
ignored the commandment "Do not covet thy neighbour's ASS." But we
digress!
VN's "admiration" for Updike was expressed in an interview [exact ref.?
- the DATE would be significant!] when Nabokov was asked one of those
irritating questions: what he thought of contemporary American writers.
VN usually fenced off such questions with generalities (oft negative),
so I recall being surprised that VN favourably ventured a few real
names, inc. Updike's. I had just read Updike's 98%-glowing post-word to
the Penguin "Luzhin's Defens[c]e." That and other snippets indicated
some measure of mutual Updike/VN respect. I was only marginally
interested in such opinions. We must read and judge for ourselves.
Now here's an interesting find, or rather NON-FIND: I've just read
Updike's long intro to the new Everyman Library composite edition of the
Angstrom Quadrilogy. This intro appeared over 4-pages of small print,
"Updike on Updike," in the Times2, Jan 29, 2009, so I was spared the
expense of buying all them Rabbits! JU mentions many influences and
counter-influences: Dostoevsky, Joyce (esp. the female soliloquies!),
Roth, Mailer, Miller, Caldwell, JM Cain, DH Lawrence, ... NO VN, not a
murmur, but DRUM-ROLL ... Edmund Wilson ("one of my models in sexual
relations," referring specifically to Wilson's 1946 prosecution over
"Memoirs of Hecate County." Updike writes of restoring cuts in "Rabbit,
Run" as a result of the "censorship retreat" following the Lady
Chatterley and Tropic of Cancer trials. THERE IS STILL NO MENTION OF
NABOKOV, where, in the context of famous literary censorships, one might
surely have expected a ref to Lolita. And this silence, recall, from one
whose prose-style is often said to show Nabokovian influences? Funny, as
in Peculiar? Nil nisi Bonham Carter, as we say in Liverpool. (We have
our own malapropisms called "malapudlianisms.")
In the Feb 2, 2009 Sunday Times, we find a quote from Nicholson Baker's
memoir "U and I: A True Story." (Granta). Baker imagines BEFORE THE
EVENT the mourners gathered at Updike's fun[f]eral (inspired by Henry
James's account of the "popular manifestation" at Ralph Waldo Emerson's
funeral):
" ... In grieving for Updike, the sombre, predominantly female citizens
would be grieving for their own youthful sexual pasts, whose hardcore
cavortings were now insulated by wools and goose downs of period charm,
vague remorse, fuzzy remembrance, spousal forgiveness and an overall
sense of imperfect attempts at cutting loose; they would be mourning the
man who, by bringing a serious Prousto-Nabokovian, morally sensitive,
National Book Award-winning prose style to bear on the micromechanics of
physical lovemaking, first licensed their moans."
Bravo! Baker himself is cunningly Prousto-Nabokovian, n'est-ce pas? A
writer to watch out for.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
PS: I've worked on several text-search algorithms over the years (see
e.g., my "Assembly Language Programming for the MC6800x," SAMS/MacMillan
- search "Kelly-Bootle" on amazon). One challenge is handling such
Boolean search criteria as "Updike-but-NOT-Nabokov."
Search the archive
<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en%0d
%0a>
Contact the Editors <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu>
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com>
Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm>
View Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm>
Manage subscription options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by
both co-editors.
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/