Subject
New Year's VN VARIA
Date
Body
New Year's Greetings!
Suellen Stringer-Hye, NABOKV-L's intrepid collector of the
monthly VNCollations, will be out-of-touch for a while. In her absence, I
offer the following assortment of Nabokov miscellany that has caught my
eye in the past couple of weeks:
1. In the Chicago Tribune of January 3, 1995, James Idema reviews David
R. Slavitt's new novel, *The Cliff* and says, in part:
"Nabokov may come to a reader's mind while reading 'The Cliff.'
Its literate satire, 'unreliable' narrator, complex plot and mock-solemn
use of poetry recall that great 1962 novel, 'Pale Fire.' But Peter DeVries
is an easier comparison. Hilarious passages demand to be read aloud, and
instead of merely recommending the book to a friend, you'll find yourself
insisting, 'Listen to this' -- and possibly cracking up before you can
finish." -----------------------------
2. Some of you will remember the NABOKV-L report of the recent British
Everyman edition of LOLITA that appeared with John Ray's inimitable
Foreword replaced by one by British novelist Martin Amis. The edition was
promptly pulled when the error was discovered. It belatedly occurred to me
that the Amis essay, quite a good one although not so entertaining as John
Ray's, is probably identical to Amis' essay, "Lolita Reconsidered," that
appeared in _The Atlantic_ in September of 1992 (pp. 109-120).
3. For the Joyce Elders file: John Lavagnino's MLA paper on Nabokov and
Aesthetic Bliss mentions en passant a marvellous quote from a 1958 letter
from screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to his son in college. The letter is an
autobiographical comic tour deforce in praise of guilt-free masturbastion.
Trumbo,
meditating on the father-son relationship, ends by saying: "I am also
perhaps, still too deeply under the literary and erotic spell of _Lolita_,
which I've read four straight times in four straight days. If you don't
know the book, you must get it at once.....His description of a two-year
Saturnalia between an aging pervert and a twelve-year-old female...is
something to make your mouth water. Now that _Lolita_ has brought
nymphetophilia into the world of fashion and made it, thank God, as
respectable as ornithology, I'm willing to place it on record that my own
sexual taste in young girls runs strongly to larvines, beside whom your
average nymphet seems gross and dissolute." From _Additional Dialogue:
Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962_, ed. Helen Manfull. (N.Y.: M. Evans and
Co., Inc.)
4. _The New Yorker_ of Jan. 9, against all odds, has unlinked references
to both Nabokv and his nemesis Nikolai Chernyshevsy in its pages.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks' in his piece, "Prodigies" on autistic artists
mentions (in passing) VN's account of his early gift for numerical
calculation that disappeared after a childhood illness. In the "Theatre"
section John Lahr reviews Tony Kushner's "Hail, Slavonia," a jeu d'esprit
reflection on Russia and revolution. Lahr writes: "`Slavs!' is a series
of tableaux leading to the inevitable question, first posed by Nikolai
Chernyshevski in the late nineteenth century, and then picked up by
Lenin, `What is to be done?'" Readers of VN's _The Gift_ will recall that
Nabokov singles out Chernyshevski (the subject of a trenchant
biographical essay making up Chapter IV of the novel) as the "bad seed"
in Russia's cultural and political development.
Suellen Stringer-Hye, NABOKV-L's intrepid collector of the
monthly VNCollations, will be out-of-touch for a while. In her absence, I
offer the following assortment of Nabokov miscellany that has caught my
eye in the past couple of weeks:
1. In the Chicago Tribune of January 3, 1995, James Idema reviews David
R. Slavitt's new novel, *The Cliff* and says, in part:
"Nabokov may come to a reader's mind while reading 'The Cliff.'
Its literate satire, 'unreliable' narrator, complex plot and mock-solemn
use of poetry recall that great 1962 novel, 'Pale Fire.' But Peter DeVries
is an easier comparison. Hilarious passages demand to be read aloud, and
instead of merely recommending the book to a friend, you'll find yourself
insisting, 'Listen to this' -- and possibly cracking up before you can
finish." -----------------------------
2. Some of you will remember the NABOKV-L report of the recent British
Everyman edition of LOLITA that appeared with John Ray's inimitable
Foreword replaced by one by British novelist Martin Amis. The edition was
promptly pulled when the error was discovered. It belatedly occurred to me
that the Amis essay, quite a good one although not so entertaining as John
Ray's, is probably identical to Amis' essay, "Lolita Reconsidered," that
appeared in _The Atlantic_ in September of 1992 (pp. 109-120).
3. For the Joyce Elders file: John Lavagnino's MLA paper on Nabokov and
Aesthetic Bliss mentions en passant a marvellous quote from a 1958 letter
from screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to his son in college. The letter is an
autobiographical comic tour deforce in praise of guilt-free masturbastion.
Trumbo,
meditating on the father-son relationship, ends by saying: "I am also
perhaps, still too deeply under the literary and erotic spell of _Lolita_,
which I've read four straight times in four straight days. If you don't
know the book, you must get it at once.....His description of a two-year
Saturnalia between an aging pervert and a twelve-year-old female...is
something to make your mouth water. Now that _Lolita_ has brought
nymphetophilia into the world of fashion and made it, thank God, as
respectable as ornithology, I'm willing to place it on record that my own
sexual taste in young girls runs strongly to larvines, beside whom your
average nymphet seems gross and dissolute." From _Additional Dialogue:
Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962_, ed. Helen Manfull. (N.Y.: M. Evans and
Co., Inc.)
4. _The New Yorker_ of Jan. 9, against all odds, has unlinked references
to both Nabokv and his nemesis Nikolai Chernyshevsy in its pages.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks' in his piece, "Prodigies" on autistic artists
mentions (in passing) VN's account of his early gift for numerical
calculation that disappeared after a childhood illness. In the "Theatre"
section John Lahr reviews Tony Kushner's "Hail, Slavonia," a jeu d'esprit
reflection on Russia and revolution. Lahr writes: "`Slavs!' is a series
of tableaux leading to the inevitable question, first posed by Nikolai
Chernyshevski in the late nineteenth century, and then picked up by
Lenin, `What is to be done?'" Readers of VN's _The Gift_ will recall that
Nabokov singles out Chernyshevski (the subject of a trenchant
biographical essay making up Chapter IV of the novel) as the "bad seed"
in Russia's cultural and political development.