Anthony Stadlen writes:

 

 

I think none of the authors Mr Twiggs mentions, and indeed no author
whatever, should be censored. Nor should most of them be censured for
publishing in Playboy. But I stand by my censure of Nabokov for
publishing in Playboy. I approve his using the Olympia Press, because
nobody else would then publish him. But his publishing in Playboy lent
support to the idea that child abuse by an aesthete is sophisticatde
and trendy. Nabokov acted more truly when approached by Kenneth Tynan
for a contribution to "Oh, Calcutta".

-----Original Message-----
From: Hyman, Eric <ehyman@UNCFSU.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:39
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov & Playboy ...



For James Twigg:

In the last sentence of your first paragraph, do you mean censored,
censured, or both?  Otherwise, you are, of course, quite correct.


Eric Hyman
Professor of English
Graduate Coordinator
Department of English and Foreign Languages
Fayetteville State University
1200 Murchison Rd.
Fayetteville, NC 28301
(910) 672-1901
ehyman@uncfsu.edu



From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
Behalf Of James Twiggs
Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2010 3:54 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov & Playboy ...







In a message dated 09/06/2010 03:08:28 GMT Daylight
Time, spklein52@HOTMAIL.COMwrites [quoting -- A. S.]:

Playboy often bills itself as America’s most intelligent smut magazine
and Nabokov was certainly one of America’s most intelligent smut
authors.


Did not Nabokov invite just this description by his bizarre collusion
with Playboy? If "Lolita" is a truly moral work, what was he playing
at? To Nabokovians it may betoken some kind of amused sophisticion,
but does it not demonstrate a moral confusion?



Anthony Stadlen



======



Am I alone in being puzzled by Anthony Stadlen’s questions about VN and
Playboy? In the annals of smut, Playboy can’t hold a candle to the
Olympia Press, which first published Lolita. If a writer is corrupted
by his association with a smut peddler, it follows that VN was
hopelessly compromised before Playboy ever entered the picture. More to
the point, a fair percentage of highly acclaimed writers have been
appearing in Playboy for well over half a century. They’ve done it for
obvious reasons--money, prestige, a guaranteed wide audience, the
publicity that comes with having your name prominently displayed in
most of the newsstands of the world, and so on. Does this mean they’ve
all entered into a “bizarre collusion” with the forces of immorality?
Surely not. Writers are, on average, no more--and no less--human than
the rest of us. It will be a dreary day if, a hundred years from now,
not only VN but Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King, Alex Haley, Camille
Paglia, Joyce Carol Oates, Malcolm X, Jane Smiley, John Updike, Stephen
Hawking, and dozens of other well-known writers, artists, and thinkers
are censored for having been associated with Playboy Magazine.

It might be thought that although VN accepted the money and exposure
that Playboy offered, he privately viewed Hefner and his magazine with
contempt. But I can find no evidence of this in the biographies of VN
and Vera. Judging from VN’s letters to Hefner that appear in Vladimir
Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977, he admired both the man (at least
in his role as editor) and the magazine. “Playboy can be always
depended upon to provide brilliant surprises,” he wrote in January
1967. A few days later, he wrote that “I always enjoy reading Playboy,
and the latest issue was especially entertaining and informative.” On
December 28, 1968, after expressing his pleasure that an excerpt from
Ada--under the title “One Summer in Ardis”--would appear in the
magazine, he added: “Have you ever noticed how the head and ears of
your Bunny resemble a butterfly in shape, with an eyespot on one
hindwing?” These are hardly the words of a man even mildly embarrassed,
let alone smitten with remorse, at his connection to a magazine of
questionable morals.

For me, at least, Anthony’s questions, which seem to have been provoked
by an undergraduate’s breezy take on the matter, are easily dealt with.
Unless we expect our writers to be paragons of a narrowly conceived,
puritanical style of virtue, there is nothing bizarre in VN’s--and more
recently Dmitri’s--association with Hefner and nothing unseemly in the
choice of Playboy as publisher of a good many of VN’s works.

It’s worth adding that Eric Naiman’s new book, Nabokov, Perversely,
opens with an account of VN’s “A Nursery Story” as it appeared in the
January 1974 issue of Playboy. After two pages, the story is
interrupted by photos of 33 nude women. The plot of the story, whether
by design or not, is thus echoed in the very format of the magazine.
Although I’m still in the skip-around stage of reading it, I have no
hesitation in recommending Naiman’s book. The parts I’ve read are by
turns deeply insightful, highly provocative, and--if one can believe
this of so scholarly a work--uproariously funny. Alas, poor Rowe.

Jim Twiggs