Buddying it Up with Borges

Me and my very short Quixote-ish goof of a "sudden fiction" show up right after Jorge Luis Borges in Norton's Sudden Fiction Latino. (Vd.! Table of Contents.)

Buy eight copies!

Nabokovilia: Pamuk's _Museum of Innocence_

I've been avoiding Pamuk for a while but may need to read Museum of Innocence for some Nabokovilia:

At a third level the book can be read as a meditation on the compulsion of collecting and, even, on the act of writing itself. For what is writing fiction but an obsessive collecting of and rearrangement of memories. The story is filled with intertextual references to the works of some of Pamuk’s favourite European authors: Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Nabokov and, above all, Proust. It could have easily have been entitled In Remembrance of Things Past. 

(Rest of the review here.)

Nabopop: The Man Who Wasn't There

The Coen brothers's The Man Who Wasn't There references Lolita? (I saw it, years ago, didn't catch the reference.)

Viz (from the Amazon DVD description): Almost in spite of the obsessive cultural references (flying saucers, Nabokov's Lolita, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), Ed Crane steps neatly from the fray as one of cinema's most memorably disenchanted characters.

Nabokov's Chess Sonnets

The sonnets are available at Chess Aficionado. From the site: 

This is the first English verse translation of the trio of linked chess sonnets that Vladimir Nabokov published in the Russian émigré journal Rul' in Berlin in November 1924. It is certainly the first by an eighty-year old! Who, OK, needed some assistance. Nabokov could, and should, have published an English translation himself, but sadly he never did. Uniquely, the sonnets, taken together, link chess, chess problems, chess history and - sex. Nabokov was to marry his lifelong partner-to-be Vera in 1925. 

(Via the Nabokv-L Listserv.)

Camelhair blazer, navy knit tie, navy checked shirt

I love camelhair -- both the color and the fabric -- but there's this immediate temptation to go all earth-tones with it (reds & browns & oranges & rusts). I think it works best when set against cooler shades: here it's mostly navy (both in the knit tie and in the shirt's check) and white. There's a bit of red, but it's restrained.

Grey suit, navy-blue vest

There are other combinatorial possibilities in this GQ slideshow, but I like this one the best.

SIGHTING: Humbert Humbert in Sweet Valley High

The return of Sweet Valley High, with some of the characters grown older, prompts thoughts of Humbert Humbert revisiting Mrs. Schiller for this New Yorker blogger:

Somehow the thought of all these glorified young characters getting old puts me in mind of the final chapters of "Lolita," when Humbert visits Lolita (now Dolly) to find her “frankly and hugely pregnant” with a dog like a fat dolphin:

Her pale freckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins and arms had lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. She wore a brown, sleeveless cotton dress and sloppy felt slippers.

It's a scene of horrible and excruciating diminution, made more agonizing by the fact that Humbert sees how sordid her life is—her body is—but loves her anyway. Of course, this isn’t Nabokov we’re talking about.

(Incidentally: my favorite Sweet Valley High title is Kidnapped by the Cult!)

Leaning From Las Vegas

This week's full of awesome Vegas stuff:

• A Continuous Lean's Michael Williams visits town, posts some terrific vintage Kodakromes.
• Weekend Stubble's Paul Collins stumbles on this Wikipedia entry: List of Las Vegas Casinos That Never Opened.
• John D'Agata writes a dark dark dark (but good & sharply observed) thing for The Believer on the town (well worth getting for that alone: lots of sharp Dave Hickey quotes but even better for D'Agata's on the town's fundamental inability to recognize or talk about its many rough patches).

Nabokovilia: Speak, Memorates

An article on Tono Monogatari, in the 2010 January Believer issue, is entitled Speak, Memorates. (Other McSweeney's-connected Speak, Memory variations include Tom Bissell's Speak, Commentary and George Saunders's Eat, Memory.)

SIGHTING: John Shade Sings!

Recording under the pseudonym John Shade (a name he gleaned from a fictional poet in the Vladimir Nabokov novel “Pale Fire’’), Godowsky has released his debut album, “All You Love Is Need.’’

(The rest at The Boston Globe.)

The musician's official web site is at http://johnshademusic.com/

Nabokov Poster

A Nabokov poster (for a design class): love the owl & the colors (see the note -- she's fixing the typo):

SIGHTING: God Bless the German Federal Film Fund

A Nabokov movie in the works? Maybe:

Meanwhile, Christine Berg, project manager of the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), told ScreenDaily that only two projects have been funded by the “German spend” incentive programme so far this year. These are Corinna Belz’s painter portrait Gerhard Richter – Ohne Titel and Harald Bergmann’s musings on a film about Vladimir Nabokov, 37 Karteikarten Zu Nabokov.

(The rest here.)

Lemony Snicket on Nabokov

Via the Nabokv-L Listserv:

Despite its originality, the series does have a recognisable lineage. “Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey were enormous for me as a child,” Handler says, “and when I started doing this, I definitely kept them in mind.” The self-referentiality of the books can be traced back to his love of Vladimir Nabokov. “I was a Nabokov freak,” Handler says wistfully. “There’s something about the way he writes that drags my brain right in.” He says there is something Nabokovian about Lemony Snicket. “He’s an unreliable narrator, he’s distracted by detail and digression until detail and digression become the point of the thing.” Handler has written adult (“that sounds kind of dirty”) novels under his own name, which exhibit a similar playfulness. 

(The rest over at The Telegraph)


See related Nabokovilia here.

An Annotated Pale Fire Website

Pale Fire Notes is actually pretty awesome and impressive (despite the self-effacing description):

Being some incomplete and largely irrelevant notes and commentary on Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, first posted pseudonymously to thePynchon-L mailing list June to November 2003. Page references are to the 1989 Random House Vintage edition.

The website can be accessed at http://importantwork.com/text/palefire/index.html

SIGHTINGS: T.C. Boyle Interview & Hipster Puppies

T.C. Boyle on a Nabokovian narrative approach he used for The Women:

NW: You made some interesting structural choices with The Women—one was to have one of Wright’s apprentices, Tadashi Sato, narrate the story, and the other was to present the stories of Wright’s love affairs in reverse chronological order, so the reader learns how each of Wright’s love affairs ends before he learns about how it began.  Was your point in reversing the chronology that certain patterns repeated so regularly in Wright’s life that the timeline of it begins to seem circular?

TCB: Well you know I’m not allowed to say things like that.  But I very much like your interpretation.  Sure, it enables me to reflect somewhat on the pattern of not only that love affair but many other love affairs that people have had over time.  You know, where you’re obsessed with the lover and want to spend every minute with him or her, and maybe it doesn’t turn out so well and they become the worst person in your life.  So at each stage of this novel, we see the horrific harpy in the wings, and then we see her in the light of redemption as it moves on.  And furthermore, to use Tadashi Sato and his grandson-in-law in writing this is something I was inspired to do by Nabokov, for instance.  It’s just very playful and it allows the reader to reflect on history and versions of history and what’s true and what’s not.

(The rest of the interview is here.)

Also: this Hipster Puppy asks you to be careful (Puppy's hip but can't spell). 

(Hipster Puppy via Autostraddle)

SIGHTING: Hertzberg's "Sparrin' Words" (The New Yorker)

On Obama and style:

He appeared to be in an unusually relaxed, even bouncy mood. He exuded confidence. The speech he delivered was no literary masterpiece (though by State of the Union standards it was downright Nabokovian), but it was a small triumph of tone and subtle theatrics. Despite the grandiosity of the setting—the curlicued proscenium, the massed dignitaries, the absurd aerobics of the endless standing ovations—the President managed to create a surprisingly intimate, almost conversational effect, as if the well of the House were a fireside and he was having a chat.

(The rest at The New Yorker: Sparrin' Words. (So yes: two New Yorker Nabokov nods in one week.)

SIGHTING: Gina Gershon Likes Lolita

Vd.: 

What is your favorite book?

One of my all-time favorite books is Lolita by Nabokov. I just think he’s such an amazing writer. It’s not the favorite because I have about a zillion favorite books. I’ve always liked The Art of Happiness, Dalai Lama’s book. I think that’s always a good go-to book if you’re feeling depressed. It puts things into perspective.

(The rest at In Search of Gina Gershon.)

And perhaps not unconnected: a bit of Nabopop: In Gershon's Showgirls, a character is referred to as a "one-day Lolita Pollyanna." I can't remember if it's Gershon ("Cristal Connors") or someone else.

Freud as a Fictional Character

I am quoting La Force about to quote Woods paraphrasing Nabokov:

As James Wood writes in his book How Fiction Works:

Nabokov used to say that he pushed his characters around like serfs or chess pieces—he had no time for metaphorical ignorance and impotence whereby authors like to say, “I don’t know what happened, by my character just got away from same and did his own thing.”

I have to suspect that even Nabokov would have had a hard time pushing Freud around.

(The rest at "Bossing Freud Around: Freud as a Fictional Character.")

Maar Kudos

Michael Maar's Speak, Nabokov has been getting favorable press:

Maar is a literary sleuth, his method a Holmesian combination of instinct, some intellectual delegation and close reading...

(The rest of the blurb at the publisher's, Verso.)

VN Sighting: Anne Hathaway Discusses the White Queen

Ms Hathaway is a Nabokov fan:

Q: Why have his books been enjoyed for generations?

A: In my opinion, what makes a great book is something that is universally specific. I didn’t read the “Alice” books when I was a child. I read them when I was in college. I was really into Nabokov, and apparently, he was really into Lewis Carroll, so I thought it was a good idea. 

(The rest at WDW News: "Anne Hathaway Discusses The White Queen, Her Costume, and the Rest of the Cast")

On Sentiment

Amis on sentiment, by way of Nabokov on Dickens:

Yeah, well. We are all quite sentimental, a word that Nabokov defended. He wrote of Dickens and the death of Little Jo in Bleak House, I will not allow you to describe this as sentimental: people who use that word have no idea what sentiment is...

(The rest at Prospect magazine.)