I applaud Luke Haines's response to the endless assaults recording companies make against their own recording artists. What this article describes is, I assure you, the very tip of the iceberg. But, other than the reviewer's brief citation of Speak Memory, I don't see a lot of connection to Nabokov.

In Nabokov's day, and for one of Nabokov's integrity (a quality with which most recording artists I've known are not overly burdened), a stunt such as that of Mr. Haines would have been out of the question.

Joyce, of course, knew the wiles of publishers. Joyce -- creator of Haines the easy tempered Brit who stayed with Mulligan and Daedalus in Martello tower, gathering notes on hibernian bohemians -- Joyce, I say, certainly felt the arrows that publishers can launch. The histories of the publications of Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist are rife with rankerous demands upon a powerless writer. As for what musicians today (especially in hip hop) go through in similar circumstances, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand an end like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 6:03 PM

Subject: Fw: a strange internet VN sighting

You didn´t want to post this one, or it did not reach you?

----- Original Message -----

From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello

To: don barton johnson

Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 12:04 PM

Subject: a strange internet VN sighting

I was researching Joyce´s Haines character in Ulysses ( and VN´s comments ) using the internet. Then I came across something quite different, related to another "Haines" but with a critical reference to Nabokov and Ulysses. This is a world of coincidences and this one seems rather neat!

I selected bits and pieces to situate the reference and marked the reference to VN in bold:

Luke Haines & The Auteurs
Das Capital: The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines & The Auteurs
[Hut; 2003]
Rating: 5.1

I doubt that most artists enjoy selecting their greatest hits for a package like this. More often than not, these collections are forced by market necessities, imply the end of an era, and lead to inevitable bifurcation between fan favorites and the label's idea of a hit. Imagine, then, the enormity of such undertaking for a songwriter whose shtick involves both unflagging self-admiration and utter contempt for labels, marketing, colleagues and fans.

I'm talking, of course, about the UK's Luke Haines, the leader of the defunct Auteurs and, with John Moore, the creator of the minimalist-pop project Black Box Recorder. Evidently facing a contract obligation to ransack his old band's four albums for a hits package, Haines found a conceptually flawless way out: He rented out a symphony orchestra and proceeded to re-record eight of Auteurs' songs in nauseatingly grand, mellow-gold arrangements that most definitely do not have to be heard to be believed.

Das Capital: The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines and the Auteurs is a primo Situationist stunt. From the title on down, it concerns itself purely with the sound of money.

As any piece of conceptual art Haines claims to despise so, Das Capital is primarily valuable as a conversation catalyst. As a piece of self-assessment, it's useless: Haines' liner notes bring to mind Nabokov's Strong Opinions, wherein Vladimir Vladimirovich spares a couple of kind words for Joyce, but only for Ulysses. Haines operates in a similar mode here. He assigns his albums short captions ("my second masterpiece") and stars (most get five out of five), obliterates any suggestion of collaboration within the Auteurs, and blurbs a remix album by µ-Ziq thus: "Remixes by some kid from Wimbledon for L500. A lot of money for a teenager. Never listened to it myself. Went on to sell well in America. 100% of the publishing goes to me."

Paired with the deliberately subpar stuff on the album, the braggadocio becomes suffocating: What we appear to have on our hands is a spoof of the very notion of quality. I would never recommend a living soul to purchase Das Capital