Archive for August, 2009
Vladimir Nabokov discusses “Lolita” part 1 of 2
Saturday, August 8th, 2009letters to the editor, NYRB, Volume 13, Number 1 · July 10, 1969
Saturday, August 8th, 2009Martin Gardner to me will always be the brilliant person who gave us The Annotated Alice, on a steady diet of which I grew up as a child, and which is, to this day, a worthy read (I am pleased to report I still possess the original copy that was given to my family in August 1973. I do not recall the occasion. I had just turned seven.).
Here are two amusing letters to the editor published in the same issue of the New York Review of Books in response to a review by Matthew Hodgart of the newly published Ada.
To the Editors:
NYR readers may be amused to know more about why Nabokov, as pointed out in Matthew Hodgart’s excellent review of ADA (May 22), refers to me on p. 542 of his novel as an “invented philosopher.” In my Ambidextrous Universe (Basic Books, 1964), in a section on Kant’s approach to space and time, I quote two lines from Pale Fire. (Nabokov’s page citation is to the British Penguin Press edition; he will find his lines rendered in Russian on p. 159 of a Russian paperback translation.) I did not mention Nabokov but credited the poem instead to his invented poet, John Shade. Nabokov returns the joke by calling me “invented,” since my book appeared on Terra, a perhaps imaginary earth, whereas the action of ADA occurs on Anti-Terra, an earth of antimatter. (Nabokov’s novel exploits the familiar science-fiction concept of “parallel worlds” first used so entertainingly by H. G. Wells in his greatest Utopia novel, Men Like Gods.)
Unfortunately, some astonishing recent experiments on time reversal were made too late for me to discuss them in my book or for Nabokov to refer to them in the remarkable essay on time that is Part 4 of ADA. It now appears that if there is an Anti-Terra in the cosmos it is not only mirror-reflected and charge-reversed, but possibly also changing in a time direction opposite to our own. A New American Library paperback edition of The Ambidextrous Universe will appear this summer with a last chapter much lengthened to explain these fantastic new developments. The new section was written, alas, too soon for me to quote from Nabokov’s imaginary antinovel with its palindromic (reversible) title.
Martin Gardner
Hastings-on-Hudson
New York
Montreux-Palace Hotel
Montreux, Switzerland
Matthew Hodgart, Esq.
Cornell University
Department of English
Sir,
I do not really mind your introducing ridiculous errors (such as “at graze” instead of “at gaze” or the reference to Gardner—look up that passage in his book and index) all through your review of ADA, but I do object violently to your seeing in reunited Van and Ada (both rather horrible creatures) a picture of my married life. What the hell, Sir, do you know about my married life? I expect a prompt apology from you.
Vladimir Nabokov
on Ada, Vladimir Nabokov
Saturday, August 8th, 2009from an interview with Bayerischer Rundfunk [1971-72]:
Personal Past
“Pure Time, Perceptual Time, Tangible Time, Time free of
content and context, this, then, is the kind of Time described
by my creature under my sympathetic direction.
The Past is also part of the tissue, part of the present,
but it looks somewhat out of focus. The Past is a constant
accumulation of images, but our brain is not an ideal organ for
constant retrospection and the best we can do is to pick out
and try to retain those patches of rainbow light flitting
through memory. The act of retention is the act of art,
artistic selection, artistic blending, artistic re-combination
of actual events. The bad memoirist re-touches his past, and
the result is a blue-tinted or pink-shaded photograph taken by
a stranger to console sentimental bereavement. The good
memoirist, on the other hand, does his best to preserve the
utmost truth of the detail. One of the ways he achieves his
intent is to find the right spot on his canvas for placing the
right patch of remembered color.”
The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun), Vladimir Nabokov
Saturday, August 8th, 2009The fragments of Nabokov’s last unfinished novel are due to be published on November 17, 2009 (or November 3, depending on which press release you read) by Random House (Penguin in the UK). Included with the 10,000 word manuscript are removeable facsimiles of the 138 index cards on which the book was composed, which is of interest to me, since they may offer considerable insight into Nabokov’s thinking and writing process. It’s worth noting that The New Yorker declined to publish an excerpt of the novel, and so Playboy, incidentally the first serial-rights publisher of Ada, will be publishing a 5000 word excerpt (half the book!) in their December issue (on newsstands November 10).
Alvin Toffler conducted an erudite and intense interview with Nabokov for Playboy in January 1964. The link is below.
But first, an excerpt:
PLAYBOY: Man’s understanding of these mysteries is embodied in his concept of a Divine Being. As a final question, do you believe in God?
NABOKOV: To be quite candid—and what I am going to say now is something I never said before, and I hope it provokes a salutary little chill: I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.
http://www.playboy.com/articles/vladimir-nabokov-playboy-interview/index.html
Style is Matter, The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov, Leland de la Durantaye, Part 1
Saturday, August 8th, 2009This eminenly readable book, published in 2007, is an insightful and satisfying glance into the world of Nabokov’s writings (in large part devoted to Lolita, but nicely addressing the complexity present in pretty much everything Nabokov committed to paper). With chapters dealing with morality, art, deceit, lexicomania, it’s a wonderful introduction to the chess playing lepidopterist. There are some surprises here, from Adolf Eichmann being given Lolita to read while awaiting trial in Jerusalem, to a possible real life proto-Humbert, nympholept Harry Lanz, Nabokov’s colleague and chess partner at Stanford University (interestingly the Stanford Alumni magazine has published an article about Lanz in which it does not shirk from revealing his extracurricular interests. See link below).
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2006/mayjun/features/lolita.html
Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald, Part 2
Friday, August 7th, 2009“But now I found writing such hard going that it often took me a whole day to compose a single sentence, and no sooner had I thought such a sentence out, with the greatest effort, and written it down, than I saw the awkward falsity of my constructions and the inadequacy of all the words I had employed. If at times some kind of self-deception nonetheless made me feel that I had done a good day’s work, then as soon as I glanced at the page next morning I was sure to find the most appalling mistakes, inconsistencies, and lapses staring at me from the paper. However much or little I had written, on a subsequent reading it always seemed so fundamentally flawed that I had to destroy it immediately and begin again. Soon I could not even venture on the first step.”
I relate.
Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald, Part 1
Friday, August 7th, 2009One of the books I am currently reading is Austerlitz, the final novel by German author W.G. Sebald who died in a car accident in 2001. Susan Sontag, for what it’s worth, called him a “contemporary master of the literature of lament and mental restlessness.” I suppose I concur, although it’s difficult to say what, exactly, makes the experience of reading this book so wonderful. The prose is clear but remains atmospheric, like a portion of a Bela Tarr film or a T.S. Eliot poem come to life. It’s surely not lament like the work of Arvo Part, for instance, nor, for that matter, a murky and merciless masterpiece like the 1964 novel Second Skin by another favorite of mine, the American writer John Hawkes. Sebald has an interesting technique of nesting narration, so that the narrator of the novel is relating the narration of his acquaintance Austerlitz who, in turn, is relating the narration of a third party. It is not nearly as unwieldly as it sounds, but it has the curious effect of softly muffling the goings on and quite successfully blurring the line between present and past. It’s a nice feeling