Vladimir Nabokov: C v D, S/D

the only other nabokov i've read is 'transparent things', which i've read maybe four times (it's v short) and enjoyed every time, although i'm still suspicious of it (this is def the kind of book that 'aesthete' applies to).

I too am struggling with Ada - will give it another few weeks before jacking it in.

I liked Pale fire - one of the fascinations of it is that opinion is evenly split over whether the central poem is awful or brilliant.

I can't see that Nabokov is a humanist - anymore than say, Flaubert.

I'm also pretty fond of the essays etc. in "Strong Opinions," but YMMV. And of course "Lolita" and "Pale Fire." And of the novels that aren't the Big Two, I like "Despair" an awful lot.

such as? i really hope there are lots of subtleties, cos that was what i thought the book really lacked...

(mild) Destroy: Pnin. I never saw the appeal.

Invitation to A Beheading is pretty stark but interesting as a comparison to Kafka's The Trial.

If Ada is a struggle, there is no particular reason to suffer through it. I like Ada, but it meanders on like that with no strong plot but with some really crazy time doublebacks and reversals.

Not enough attention is paid to the poem in Pale Fire, independently of the narrative in the notes. The opening line is one of the greatest ever.

D: The Gift (unless you have a vast and comprehensive knowledge of the history of Russian literature)

More later if I have time...damn you, work!

Well for my three cents, most people go on about Pale Fire as a dialogic discourse, i.e. there are obviously different voices of narration, but no one is quite sure who is who and who is saying what. So there are lots of ambiguities and extrapolations possible from this. As mentioned already, the poem splits critical opinion in a pretty unique way. I googled critical opinion in the first place after reading it cos I couldn't work out whether I thought it the verse was deliberately shit or, contradictorily, a fairly successful attempt at a contemporary academic poet's style and sensibilities. The whole tone of the book is hard to get a fix on, shifting and mercurial but unlike most such deliberately ambiguity-ridden modern texts this seems to enable multiple, contradictory readings rather than a mush of abstraction. And it's also fun and funny to read.

if this is "one joke", fair enough tho'.

The "Mandarin Aesthete" bit is a red herring; VN himself said that (I'm paraphrasing, but this is close), "Rather than a frivolous firebird, one day someone will come along and make the more accurate claim that I was really a stern moralist." His books are all aestheticized sermons exempla; they're gestalt images which invite you to see the ambiguity in morality and the necessity of morality when faced with ambiguity.

I'm pretty busy at the moment, but I'm sure I'll have more to say on this later. Ada and The Gift are indeed difficult and I don't think they're really worth the trouble unless you're obsessed with the guy. His minor works have their moments, but for me it's all about the Holy Trinity: Lolita; Speak, Memory; Pale Fire. Those are the essentials.

I liked Pale Fire a lot, but I think a problem is that one of the things that Nabokov does well is set up a main character or narrator who comes across as very charming and intelligent, but is actually a liar (Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Lolita) or an imbecile (Despair). Kinbote is so obviously nuts and obsessive that Nabokov can't use this trick, you never really start to trust him or even really like him.

i love pnin - it's one of my favorites. i think it IS quite complex, but because it's also very funny and light its complexities aren't immediately apparent. there's a decent analysis here if you're innarested, tho i'd read the story first.

to the recommendations already made i'd add his lectures on literature (the ones on kafka and austen and joyce are good, iirc). also his poem "a lecture on russian poetry"(or "an evening of russian poetry"), which can be heard read by N here (extracted from a one-hour program from 1964, introduced by s.sontag).

Anyway, my only particular SEARCH is the nutsoid tv interview VN did with Robert Robinson (of 'Ask the Family' fame) some time in the late 60s/early 70s. VN refused to be interviewed unless he was sent the questions and could write out his answers in advance - so on camera he is shown acting out spontaneity while reading from index cards. Funny exchange about the proper pronounciation of his name, also.

I think there are times when VN is a disdainful aesthete, and also times when he is a moralist, and rarer occasions when is a sublime combination of the two - my thinking on this is derived from the Wood book I linked to at the top of the thread, which, as well as being a superb book on VN, is also an exemplary work of criticism.

Total classic: Humbert and Quilty's exchange on the darkened porch:

"Where the devil did you get her?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said: The weather's getting better. Who's the lassie?"
"My daughter"
"You lie. She's not."
"Excuse me?"
"I said: July was hot."

etc etc. (from memory so pardon mistakes)

I like the sound of this. One of his famous quotes is: "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."

Apart from works already mentioned (of which I like Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, Speak Memory, and the Lectures best), I return constantly to the Collected Short Stories. These, for the most part, are his least ironical works (in terms of deceiving the reader), and they're full of exquisite pathos, bordering on sentimentality (I love sentimentality when it's written by smart bastards).

My favourite bits of this thread are:

*his poem "a lecture on russian poetry"(or "an evening of russian poetry"), which can be heard read by N here*

(The Secret Life of Nick Dastoor)

and

*the unreliable narrator(s) in PF is the whole point*

(I've often thought this myself, but it's nice to have confirmation)

that vn knows this is the case doesn't stop it being a massive flaw, though.

Since I'm on about this anyway, I should say that VN was the author who taught me to reread. The first time I read Lolita it was like discovering someone who spoke in what seemed like the germ of my own undeveloped voice. When I read The Annotated Lolita (searching this is U+K), it was a revelation: books could have several layers of subtext which enfolded and disturbed the narrative; they could be allusive, develop according to the transformative logic of evolving themes rather than straight plot or character development, they could be playful and puzzle-like. VN is the one author who I've read EVERTHING by that's available in english: the novels, stories, poems, problems, letters, even the recently published entomological stuff. I slogged though both volumes of Brian Boyd's hagiography and devoured mountains of criticism. This is mentalism, I know, but "one joke" would not have been enough to sustain it. Read him, and read him again, and again, and again. It's worth it.

how did people mentioning pale fire read it? after starting to read the poem, and just looking back at the 'notes' to see what I might do about them, I realized that if I read the poem straight through I would easily lose the connection to the notes when I then read the notes. so rather than reading the poem once then starting the notes and going back to the poem, I read a few stanzas, then read the notes for the poem, then back to the poem, etc. I don't think I otherwise had an especially keen eye for the subtleties of meaning in the whole thing, so perhaps the way I read it made me inclined to not see it as a 'one joke' sort of thing.

Far too much classic and search for me to list, but just briefly -- Invitation to a Beheading, Bend Sinister, The Gift, Look at the Harlequins!, The Eye as well as the usual suspects already mentioned herein. And Essays on Russian Literature, for his essays on Gogol and Tolstoy (whom he loved) and Dostoyevski (whom he despised).

vidal i think is using it as a diss

Anyway - to expand a bit on the notion of one-jokeness. I would say VN was particularly prey to a kind of cleverness, and the case in point is the story about the Vane Sisters (I won't give away the one joke in case any of you decide to ever read it). But that is probably the most one-joke story in the history of literature... and, I think symptomatic of a kind of mandarin disdain present throughout his work. Not that it stops me enjoying a lot of his writing.

I agree with this completely, but I think it was less the result of some sort of cynical manipulation and more a) his aristocratic unbringing and b) the result of being 5x exiled and needing some sort of transferable, universal cultah to make reference to. The literary world provided that for him (as well as social contacts, in both Berlin and America). One of the most interesting things about VN for me is how he was one of the last really great high modernists who confronted pop culture through necessity yet never really resolved themselves (himself) to it. Pynchon (one of VN's students) is sort of right on the other side of that line, and probably more "relevant" or whatever today in regard to this balance of parody/belle lettrism (or lack of)/embrace of pop cult in literature (not meant as a diss).

(hey that reads like anthony)

he's kind of a prick about anna k: he says unless you do the stuff he goes on to describe, you haven't really been appreciating (?) the novel the right way. he would have the reader drawing maps to go with all of the scenes, figuring out how big the rooms are and where they connect up with others, etc. but that's like work and stuff even if it does sound like a good idea.

"Satire is a lesson, parody is a game."

He did stick very closely to the text in his criticisms, which I tend to like. Never figured out why he liked Dickens so much tho.

One thing I don't get: the Nipper kicks off by saying that he's just finished PALE FIRE. In Nov 2002. But I went to a Lloyd Cole concert (don't stop reading, this is true) with the Nipper EARLY IN 2000, and had just admiringly read that book; and on the way the Nipper slagged it off!! I think he may even have called it a one-joke novel.

Surely the Nipper is correct, though, to say that 'mandarin' and 'humanist', 'aesthete' and 'moralist', can alternate or coexist? (Rorty makes this case too, in his way.) He's also correct, of course, about THE MAGICIAN'S DOUBTS (one of the few books I read before he did).

Footnote: 'Aesthete' is probably a term that needs rescuing; maybe from its admirers as well as its detractors. People who knock what they call 'aestheticism' don't always seem to me to have a clear idea of what might be wrong with it, what might be right with it, what alternatives there might be, and whether it's combinable with them.

I'm not sure that your (true) points about 'aesthete' distinguish it from that many other words in literary discourse. Postmodernism (or however you prefer to spell it), romantic, gothic, all sorts of words are in a similar state, more or less.

1) Boyd looks a bit of a cheerleader; and I can't trust one who places PF above U.

2) But good, my Woodness, quel maitre.

So, yes, there's a general point to be made about 'labelling', looking closely, etc. But there are also a host of specific points to be made, inc. a serious specification and (as you say) clarification of "aestheticism".

(OK, my bugbears here come out of particular contexts - as do others', in relation to other words.)

Anyhow, I recently finished Bend Sinister, and I'm pretty sure it's one of his worst novels as far as I'm concerned, It's his first English novel and it's pretty obvious. There are some great parts, especially near the end, but his usual dense descriptions just seem awkward through most of the book.

Perhaps this is wishful thinking.

Rorty does an OK job vs the idea that VN is disengaged from 'human sympathy' or whatever.

Anyone know that book on Gogol he wrote? What title? Should I recommend it to my friend (who's Russian, adores Nabokov,...)

The books that I've tried (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin, and Look at the Harlequins) I've found underwhelming, but wondered if the deficiency is with me.

The other author who gives me that inadequacy feeling is Patrick White.

For years I could recite the first page of Lolita. I don't think I ever read something as great as that first page. It's just pure utter bliss. I'm really envious of his ability to play with words, his ability to just write such perfect sentences and great stories. At first I was slightly hesitant about Sebastian Knight, but he won me over.

I am not a particular fan of his because the byplay that Nabokov most delights in is not a byplay that I delight in equally. I also do not delight in assembling jigsaw puzzles or writing double acrostics. I simply recognize that my personal lack of zest does not mean that the delight others feel in these activities is not classic.

Have read 'Pnin', is fantastic. All week have I been speaking Pninian voice. Like Borat, but incalculatably better.

Jon Safran Foer has nothing on that book.

Have just started Pnin today, jinx

I mean, how much pathos can you fit into 160 pages?

160 units

haha

The tone of that rhetorical question does kind of irritate me (I'm picturing a giant, exploding blurb on the front cover: "Every page is packed with pathos!")

But yeah, the book is all about the narrator's affectionate pity, superiority and guilt toward Pnin.

Superiority, perhaps, in manners of competence, but I think there is less irony, more respectful persuasion in his regular invocations of "Heroic Pnin" or "Brilliant Pnin". In that regard, 'affectionate' is the most powerful authorial input I can detect (alongside guilt, yes). Pnin's ability to brush off poetic, almost tragic misfortune and continue to pursue his ideals is absolutely, totally heroic.

I gotta get back to Nabokov - I was on a kick for awhile there and read Lolita, Ben Sinister, Pale Fire, and that Harlequin/memoirs one all in a row and got a little burned out.

Ben Sinister = new ILX screen name

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but seeing Pale Fire as a one trick pony means you haven't read it carefully enough.

Yeah, actually I had the near opposite problem - parsing all the layers seemed more trouble than it was worth

Brian Boyd's two-volume bio of VN is not only a great bio but contains a lot of really good insight into the content and style of the novels. I found Ada almost unreadable at first but after reading Boyd on it I went back and really appreciated it.

Re: the first post on this thread--

Pale Fire is not a comedy routine!

"Dmitri Nabokov, son of Vladimir, has decided to publish The Original of Laura, the novel his dying father commanded be destroyed"

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/04/nabokov_original_of_laura.html

good news

Unless you're Vladimir Nabokov.

no one ask the dead

I hate this kind of thing but I guess writers ought to take extra care to burn everything they never want published after they die.

plus Dmitri Nabokov said his father told him in a dream he can publish it.
the ultimate permission.

no one ask the dead

http://blog.tapuz.co.il/officemice/images/1745387_60.jpg

in some ways, artists concerned about posterity should never have children.

or agents

I don't know if it's posterity or a perfectly natural dislike for people rifling through your bins.

Pretty cool:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/12/have-you-seen-n.html

ooh thx ned.

i posted this on another thread this morn:

http://imagecache5.art.com/p/LRG/27/2781/VMOTD00Z/carl-mydans-vladimir-nabokov-catching-a-butterfly.jpg

"I don't haff umbrellas in my dreams. Or balloons."

It was love at first touch rather than at first sight, for I had met her several times before without experiencing any special emotions; but one night, as I was seeing her home, something quaint she had said made me stoop with a laugh and lightly kiss her on the hair—and of course we all know of that blinding blast which is caused by merely picking up a small doll from the floor of a carefully abandoned house: the soldier involved hears nothing; for him it is but an ecstatic soundless and boundless expansion of what had been during his life a pinpoint of light in the dark center of his being. And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.

totally fucking amazing

http://erickert.blogspot.com/2007/04/tip-of-tongue-taking-trip.html

!

to add to all the good stuff here, Nabokov's Dozen (which is mainly the stories he originally wrote in English) is my favorite collection of short stories ever, I think.

i second that - "signs and symbols" is particularly great.

November 3 release for The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun). 288 pages, but i have a feeling it's going to be large type and plenty of white space...

I think I saw somewhere that the release of 'The Original of Laura' will include reproductions of all of the index cards? Which is a more interesting way to fill the pages, but still.

oh yeah, you're right. from the publishers:

And the ingenious format of the book (which includes removable facsimiles of the index cards) will make an even more extraordinary occasion of this publishing event.

it kinda bugs me what a snob nabokov was -- his critical snubs are always hilarious but i'd hate to think that anyone used them as an excuse not to read dostoevsky or something.

that said, 'pale fire' became my favorite novel ever when i read it a few months ago.

if you're from an aristocratic russian family and can write amazing novels in two languages and speak like three other languages then i think you're entitled to a little snobbery personally

the superficials critic sayings about Lolita and his entire pose in this interview makes this looks like a lol sketch.

just had a chance to watch the youtubes now I'm back from work, thanks mc, those were great.

think nabokov was a snob in a few things, but i don't think it's the case with his dostoevsky-baiting - that's more about taking on sacred cows, isn't it? also, satre did an early review of 'despair' calling dostoevsky one of vn's 'spiritual mentors' which must have wound him up on at least three levels.

*sartre

pic of him wearing boxing gloves on 'ifcharlieparkerwasagunslinger' = CLASSICx1,000,0000

^^^cosign - stole it and used it myself

What is the best way to read 'Pale Fire'? I started today and read the Foreword on the way in... should I read the poem in its entirety or start with the commentary and flick back for the relevant verses?

I did both, i.e. read the poem in the poem in its entirety first, and then read the commentary while flicking back. It was a two-bookmark situation.

Whichever way you want I reckon. That's part of its pleasure. I seem to remember that flicking was the way I read it, and I'm inclined to think that you start reading the poem differently if you do that, but I don't think it's necessary.

Or, yep, what franny glass said.

On no account start with the commentary. That would really be making things hard for yourself.

read it in sequence from page 1 to the last page of the index. what are you, some kind of anarchist?

Too much Cortazar as a nipper.

What is the best way to read 'Pale Fire'? I started today and read the Foreword on the way in... should I read the poem in its entirety or start with the commentary and flick back for the relevant verses?

― Tuncay Stryder (Matt DC), Tuesday, August 25, 2009 9:33 AM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the first time i read it, i read each section of the poem followed by that sections notes--was kind of the best of both worlds, esp since i dont think i wouldve had the patience to read the poem all the way through

but make sure you take an hour to go through the index at the very end too!

I did too and for the same reason.

I just started it last night too and had been following Kinbote's ~advice~ of reading the commentary for a section before reading the poem. Max's reading seems a little more intuitive though.

it's not choose your own adventure

kinda is imo

I started on the first page and read through to the last page and was totally wrapped up by the book and its narrative construction, really ingenious.

but that approach isn't strictly necessary

is anyone going to read the fake new one? i'm going to skip it

Gonna read the poem straight through from the start seeing as Kinbote tells me to do the exact opposite and I have a strong feeling he is not to be trusted.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31zJaLxIJEL._SS500_.jpg

psyched for the inevitable disappointment. apt cover tho.

Read Tyrants Destroyed yesterday and have been thinking about/a bit freaked out by The Vane Sisters all today, maybe not really a "joke" per se

posted this on my blog today, it's pretty fascinating:
Nabokov Butterfly Theory Is Vindicated

I love that story, read it last night. The virtue of maintaining your interests in all fields vindicated!

not once mentioned on this thread, search The Luzhin Defense and also Nabokov on Gogol. both great

(Nabokov on Gogol has been mentioned, so just reaffirming)

Also it's just The Defense

Must depend on the edition -- my Penguin Classics edition is titled The Luzhin Defense. But yeah, it's really good.

(edition)

its actually the D-FENS

http://streetmaisgeek.free.fr/lys-cv/public/Lolita/.Nabokov_butterfly2_m.jpg

His titles are better than the books themselves imho.

I recently re-read Lolita and some of it kind of bugged me. It was, up until that point, my favorite book.

Nabokov conceded that the thought of butterflies making a trip from Siberia to Alaska and then all the way down into South America might sound far-fetched. But it made more sense to him than an unknown land bridge spanning the Pacific. “I find it easier to give a friendly little push to some of the forms and hang my distributional horseshoes on the nail of Nome rather than postulate transoceanic land-bridges in other parts of the world,” he wrote.

and ned otm

after years of violent romance with this guy i've settled into thinking that i could keep only lolita, pnin, and the russian literature criticism, and be as happy as necessary.

(ada is maybe the best example in history of a style gone totally rancid.)

I recently re-read Lolita and some of it kind of bugged me. It was, up until that point, my favorite book.

That's ok - books will do this often.

Also it's just The Defense

actually it was originally Zashchita Luzhina

this footnote made me laugh and laugh; it is like the platonic nabokov parenthesis:

In revising my translation for a new edition I have changed "clamorous" to the absolutely exact "cronking".

you think it's some total bullshit word he hallucinated in the dust on a butterfly's wing but no, he is talking about geese! they do cronk. which according to urbandictionary means "to take a shit and masturbate at the same time".

this post upthread makes me rly happy

Gonna read the poem straight through from the start seeing as Kinbote tells me to do the exact opposite and I have a strong feeling he is not to be trusted.

not b/c i think that's the "right" way to read it but because, you know, that's the spirit

this post upthread makes me rly happy

Gonna read the poem straight through from the start seeing as Kinbote tells me to do the exact opposite and I have a strong feeling he is not to be trusted.

not b/c i think that's the "right" way to read it but because, you know, that's the spirit

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, November 24, 2012 9:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ack, but the whole point of the word golf game at the beginning is let the reader know that following his lead will actually lead to pay-offs!

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/the-art-translation

today discovered the source of poster name 'flamboyant goon tie included' :)

Started reading Michael Wood's book on V. on the side and am taken by it. Haven't been a huge fan of Wood insofar as I read him in the LRB but am enjoying this quite a bit. I think it's unavoidable that I'll be returning to Nabokov over the next while. It's reawakened by interest in reading The Gift and The Defense which I had sidelined a while ago.

*my interest (and I also should have written that I haven't been a huge fan of Wood from what I've read by him in the LRB). Too many pre and prandial drinks this evening.

finished rereading Lolita today, what a great weird work of art

would like to read an academic article or two on the book if anyone can recommend some