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Re: SIGHTING--from a review by James Wood
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LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
April 14, 2011
James Wood review:
* After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory by John Casey
Oxford, 468 pp, £22.50, January 2010,
ISBN 978 0 19 509295 0http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n08/james-wood/whats-next
Casey is an acute historian, but less impressive as a theorist or philosopher of
the concept of the afterlife. Curiously for a teacher of English, he neglects
most of the literary dimension after Milton, despite the enterprising
speculations of many novelists and poets. To choose just from those writers with
a pronounced theological emphasis, there is no mention here of Dostoevsky,
Rilke, Kafka, Bataille, Patrick White, Beckett, Nabokov, Bellow, Spark,
Marilynne Robinson, Saramago or Coetzee (whose novel Diary of a Bad Year has
several paragraphs on the afterlife). Nabokov’s work is shot through with a
persistent mysticism; in Pnin, the author imagines the dead watching us as ‘a
democracy of ghosts’, sitting in continuous session. Bellow’s work, especially
Humboldt’s Gift, was strongly influenced by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy,
which teaches, among other things, that we can communicate with the dead, who
are all around us in the ‘spirit world’.
====
Although this is the only reference to VN, Wood's entire review is well worth
reading.
I would also recommend John Gray's recent book, The Immortalization Commission:
Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death. It contains no mention of VN but
discusses at length F. W. H. Myers and his circle of spiritualists, as well as a
host of Russians, both pre- and postrevolutionary, who were also out to prove
the existence of--and in some cases to manufacture--an afterlife.
An essay by Gray appeared in The Guardian in early January:
John Gray on humanity's quest for immortality
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/08/john-gray-immortality
This was followed by Banville's review of Gray's book:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/29/healthmindandbody-history?INTCMP=SRCH
and also Richard Holloway's review in The Observer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/30/immortalization-commission-john-gray-review?INTCMP=SRCH
Jim Twiggs
________________________________
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April 14, 2011
James Wood review:
* After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory by John Casey
Oxford, 468 pp, £22.50, January 2010,
ISBN 978 0 19 509295 0http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n08/james-wood/whats-next
Casey is an acute historian, but less impressive as a theorist or philosopher of
the concept of the afterlife. Curiously for a teacher of English, he neglects
most of the literary dimension after Milton, despite the enterprising
speculations of many novelists and poets. To choose just from those writers with
a pronounced theological emphasis, there is no mention here of Dostoevsky,
Rilke, Kafka, Bataille, Patrick White, Beckett, Nabokov, Bellow, Spark,
Marilynne Robinson, Saramago or Coetzee (whose novel Diary of a Bad Year has
several paragraphs on the afterlife). Nabokov’s work is shot through with a
persistent mysticism; in Pnin, the author imagines the dead watching us as ‘a
democracy of ghosts’, sitting in continuous session. Bellow’s work, especially
Humboldt’s Gift, was strongly influenced by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy,
which teaches, among other things, that we can communicate with the dead, who
are all around us in the ‘spirit world’.
====
Although this is the only reference to VN, Wood's entire review is well worth
reading.
I would also recommend John Gray's recent book, The Immortalization Commission:
Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death. It contains no mention of VN but
discusses at length F. W. H. Myers and his circle of spiritualists, as well as a
host of Russians, both pre- and postrevolutionary, who were also out to prove
the existence of--and in some cases to manufacture--an afterlife.
An essay by Gray appeared in The Guardian in early January:
John Gray on humanity's quest for immortality
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/08/john-gray-immortality
This was followed by Banville's review of Gray's book:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/29/healthmindandbody-history?INTCMP=SRCH
and also Richard Holloway's review in The Observer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/30/immortalization-commission-john-gray-review?INTCMP=SRCH
Jim Twiggs
________________________________
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/