Great Beginnings!

So the Selected Shorts episode with my story "Best Worst American" in it aired this weekend! It's here (the 10/21 episode titled "Great Beginnings").

And here's the full interview of Keret and Tinti talking about the stories in the episode, mine included.). 

You can get to the actual MP3 of the episode here, where Cristin Milioti does an awesome job reading the piece.

Nabokovilia: Arthur Phillips' The Tragedy of Arthur

Critics have already noted the structural similarities between Arthur Phillips' The Tragedy of Arthur and Pale Fire -- novel masquerading as introduction and commentary to a purportedly real work -- but there are some explicit nods at Nabokov in the novel. (Also some wonderful, less explicit, shadowy nods: chess games, magic lanterns, anagrams.) Here are two. My favorite follows first:

A year later, I am writhing to escape this web spun by two dead men, and literary executorship has become the most self-eradicating punishment Dante could have devised for an egotistical author. There was another writer born on my and Will's birthday, a hero of mine, whose son also signed his life over to promoting and protecting his father's works. I think of them both as these two other laughing corpses fling their bolas around my ankles. (187)

*

I wrote to my father, still, from Prague, wrote for him, still. The definition of insanity, the twelve-steppers have patiently taught me, one day at a time, is to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. I wrote for him, still. I have now written four novels, and I devised the idea of an anagram for him to decipher over years. The first letters of my titles of my novels are S, P, E, and A. I planned to write, with all my remaining years, books initialed S, H, A, K, E, R, and E, and then, maybe, A, N, D, M, E.

Shakespeare's lines are a nursery of titles for other, better writers: Pale Fire, Exit Ghost, Infinite Jest, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Sound and the Fury, Unnatural Acts, The Quick and the Dead, Against the Polack, To Be or Not to Be, Band of Brothers, Casual Slaughters. At the very least, I have never named one of my books after his stuff. (120)

More David Mitchell Nabokovilia: Ghostwritten

From David Mitchell's Ghostwritten:

Look at her! Look at that woman. Febrile. Corvine. Black velvet clothes, not an ounce of sluttiness about her. Intelligent and alert, what's that book she's reading? And her skin -- that perfect West African black, so black it has a bluish tinge. Those gorgeous, proud lips. What's she reading. Tilt it this way a bit, love... Nabokov! I knew it. She has a brain!

*

Tim sighed. "Sorry, Marco. This is going to be protracted sibling stuff. Why don't you drop in next week after I've had a chance to read this lot? Oh, and I know this is Herod calling Thatcher a bit insensitive but you really need to change your shirt. And there's something white stuck in your hair. And a last word of advice -- I tell this to anyone trying to get a book finished -- steer clear of Nabokov. Nabokov makes anyone feel like a clodhopper.

Progress Report!

Here's what is currently on our coffee table: the rough draft of my novel. Most of the rough draft is staying, the stuff on the left -- maybe 3/5, maybe even 3/4. The stuff on the right is going away. The stuff that is staying is about to go through some major, major rewriting.

The chucking/major-rewriting is what you do -- what everyone does -- so the following remains a mystery:

1. Why I somehow assume (and always assume) that whatever I write is going to emerge as this brilliant and perfect thing the first time around.
2. Why -- even though I somehow know 1. is never going to happen -- I hope no one else will notice, which is also never the case.
3. Why I despair when facing 1. & 2., even though it always happens, and then temporarily give up on the thing.
4. Why I end up forgetting that there are ways one goes about fixing, finessing, and making something not-currently-awesome into something awesome -- and that they are not terribly mysterious, or even that laborious.
5. Why I will forget this entire cycle the next time around.

Nabokov had some pretty strong words re. folks who displayed their rough drafts ("Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one's sputum.") So by way of apology for all the spit here is what is currently on our bay window (blanket, basket, Hodge, fox, elephant, flowers). 

Nabokovilia in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

From David Mitchell's remarkable Cloud Atlas:

Speak, Memory. No, not a word. My neck moves. Hallelujah. Timothy Langland Cavendish can command his neck and his name has come home. November 7. I recall a yesterday and see a tomorrow. Time, no arrow, no boomerang, but a concertina. Bedsores. How many days have I lain here? Pass. How old is Tim Cavendish? Fifty? Seventy? A hundred? How can you forget your age? (354)

FYS 100 02 & 06: Obsessed

Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's First-Year Seminars Obsessed, sections 02 & 06 (FYS 100.02 & FYS 100.06):

• Syllabus (FYS 100.02) (MWF 8-8:50am)
• Syllabus (FYS 100.06) (MWF 10-10:50am)
• Monday 9/10 individual conference meeting times
• Monday 10/15 individual conference meeting times
• Helpful links and resources for the essays
• Our calendar of due dates, conferences, and readings
• Online self-evaluation form for Friday 28 September 2012
• Essay 1 rubric

Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.

ENG 319.01: Craft of a Genre: Fiction

Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's course Cracked Kettles for Dancing Bears, Craft of a Genre: Fiction (ENG 319.01), taught by professor Juan Martinez:

• Course syllabus
• Story guidelines
• Peer Feedback guidelines
• Exercises
• Formal constraints for story due 9/20/12
• Formal constraints for story due 10/18/12
• Our calendar of due dates, exams, and readings

Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.

ENG 225.01: English Literature I: the Middle Ages to 1800, Fall 2012, Lebanon Valley College

Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's course Dead or Ecstatic, a Survey of English Literature I: the Middle Ages to 1800 (ENG 225.01):

• Course syllabus
• Group presentation requirements
• Our calendar of due dates, exams, and readings
• Brit. lit group timeline
• Take-home final guidelines

Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.

Nabokovilia: Cheryl Strayed's Wild

From Cheryl Strayed's Wild:

After I was done talking, Spider said, "I've got a story for you, Cheryl. I think it's along the lines of what you're talking about. I was reading about animals a while back and there was this motherfucking scientist in France back in the thirties or forties or whenever the motherfuck it was and he was trying to make art pictures like the kinds of pictures in serious motherfucking paintings that you see in museums and shit. So the scientist keeps showing the apes these paintings and giving them charcoal pencils to draw with and then then one day one of the apes finally draws something but it's not the art pictures that it draws. What it draws is the bars of its own motherfucking cage. Its own motherfucking cage! Man, that's the truth, ain't it? I can related to that and I bet you can too, sister."

"I can," I said earnestly.

(Explanation below the fold if the Nabokov bit isn't coming immediately to mind)

Fallen Fallen is the Confectionery

About a block down from the Farmer's Market was this building with its preserved ad and its abandoned entrance to what must have been an office. The ad reads, "Walla Walla Candy Co. / Manufacturers and Jobbers of Confectionery." There was lots of awesome graffiti by the office, some of it revised: "Repent," and "Flee fornication the century Harlots repent," and "Fallen fallen is Babylon." So the place was once a place for candy and then a place for sin, or a place for someone to think about and write his or her opinions about sin. (Rest of the photos below the fold.)

Nabokovilia: Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot

From Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot:

"Bellovian," Leonard said. "It's extra nice when they change the spelling slightly. Nabokovian already has the v. So does Chekhovian. The Russians have it made. Tolstoyan! That guy was an adjective waiting to happen." (p. 57)

Possible second bit of Nabokovilia (the gesticulating trees echo Signs and Symbols -- relevant passage below the fold):

A three-thirty, instead of showing up for J.V. football practice, Leonard went straight home. A sense of impending doom, of universal malevolence, pursued him the entire way. Tree limbs gesticulated menacingly in his peripheral vision. Telephone lines sagged like pythons between the poles. When he looked up at the sky, however, he was surprised to find that it was cloudless. No storm. Clear weather, the sun pouring down. He decided that there was something wrong with his eyes. (p. 258)

Nabokovilia: Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty

From Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty:

"Nabokov's Family fled Russia. How could the young Nabokov, sitting innocently and elegantly in a red chair, leafing through a book on butterflies imagine such displacement. Such loss." (p. 7)

Lorrie Moore does "Signs & Symbols"!

Lorrie Moore's "Referential," her short story appearing in the 28 May 2012 issue of the New Yorker, is a total and awesome tribute to Nabokov's "Signs & Symbols." Moore's The first paragraph follows below. The rest is in the magazine.

For those unfamiliar with "Signs & Symbols": Moore's title is a reference to the protagonist's condition, "referential mania," a where "the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence. He excludes real people from the conspiracy, because he considers himself to be so much more intelligent than other men. Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to each other, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His in- most thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees."

Moore's opening shadows Nabokov's as well: "For the fourth time in as many years, they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to take to a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind. Desires he had none. Man-made objects were to him either hives of evil, vibrant with a malignant activity that he alone could perceive, or gross comforts for which no use could be found in his abstract world. After eliminating a number of articles that might offend him or frighten him (anything in the gadget line, for instance, was taboo), his parents chose a dainty and innocent trifle—a basket with ten different fruit jellies in ten little jars."

The full text of Nabokov's version is a available here. See/hear Mary Gaitskill talking about her love of the novel and reading the whole thing, also in the New Yorker.


(Via the Nabokv-L Listserv.)

Mystery bag!

Internets, we bought this bag in San Francisco's Chinatown for like 99 cents and it's been one of my favorite carry-alls since:

I've been carrying it around for a while, and it's taken a beating, and I'd very much love to find another one. Any clue as to what it's called or who sells them or anything?

I'm not alone in liking these! Delphine carries it all through her various ruined vacations in Eric Rohmer's terrific The Green Ray, which is apparently streaming until someone puts a stop to it. Here is proof:

Too Many Blue Shoes!

I own too many blue shoes! Also: you can never own too many blue shoes. But I am stopping at five pairs.

News: The French Vladimir Nabokov society

The web site for the Chercheurs Enchantés -- the French Vladimir Nabokov society -- is up and running! Here is their web site, and below follows the description of who they are and what their mission is:

This website was created by the members of the French Vladimir Nabokov Society which gathers scholars, artists, translators, writers, and Nabokov enthusiasts. 

Along with a presentation of the society and of its members, it includes a biography of Vladimir Nabokov, an extensive bibliography of French criticism on Vladimir Nabokov, a series of links to websites dedicated to Nabokov studies, to his works and his passions such as entomology. 

The website also announces its first international conference focusing on the various aspects of Vladimir Nabokov’s relationship with France. This conference will be held in Paris from 30th May to 1st June 2013.
http://www.vladimir-nabokov.org/manifestation-vladimir-nabokov-et-la-france-en

The Chercheurs Enchantés join the International Vladimir Nabokov Society as well as the Nabokov Society of Japan as part of a now well established, and very exciting, group of like-minded scholars exploring all things Nabokov.

Accidental domokun/anthropologie mashup.

Accidental domokun/anthropologie mashup.

Someone pinned a shirt to me & covered up my shame!

Someone pinned a shirt to me & covered up my shame!

Dmitri Nabokov, 1934-2012

Photo from this obituary.

Dmitri Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov's son, passed away today. He was a remarkable man -- funny, tough, ferociously intelligent, a race-car driver and an opera singer and a great steward of his father's work -- and will be very much missed. Below follow some of the more notable reminiscences posted on the Nabokv-L Listserv and elsewhere:

• I Will Sing When You're All Dead
• Terry Myers on watching Dmitri with Dmitri
• Panayoti Kelaidis on not meeting Dmitri
• See also the threads under the subject line "Dmitri," "Dmitri Nabokov," "DVN 1934-2012," and "Farewell Dmitri" in the 2012 February archives of the Nabokv-L Listserv.
• The New York Times obituary for Dmitri Nabokov.
• Essential reading: Brian Boyd's touching recollection of Dmitri's life and legacy.

Sarah made me this awesome 3d card for our belated valentine's day.

Sarah made me this awesome 3d card for our belated valentine's day.

Convergences: Hyatt Place keycard totally looks like a Damien Hirst dot painting.

Damien Hirst

Hyatt Place keycard

Hyatt Place keycard totally looks like a Damien Hirst dot painting.

Roadside Oddities: Novels of the 50s (ENGL347) Whitman College Spring 2012

Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Roadside Oddities: Novels of the 50s (ENGL347) Whitman College Spring 2012:

• Syllabus
• On the Wiki
• Research paper requirements
• Our calendar of due dates and readings

Introduction to Creative Writing (ENGL 150-B), Whitman College, Spring 2012

Here's the material you'll need for Introduction to Creative Writing, ENGL 150-B, Whitman College, Spring 2012!

• The syllabus
• Our calendar of readings, events, and due dates
• Writing Exercises
• Formal constraints for story due on 2/9/12
• Formal constraints for story due on 2/23/12
• Formal constraints for story due on 3/8/12
• Formal constraints for revision due on Thursday 4/12/12
• Portfolio Requirements
• Supplementary Stories, Poems, and Essays Worth Your While

VN Sighting in J. Winterson Memoir

Jeanette Winterson's memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? offers up a funny, incisive chapter, "English Literature A-Z," where Nabokov appears throughout. (She is not a fan.) Favorite bit appears after the fold: