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Sandy Klein: three articles about Lila Azanganeh's book on Nabokov.#
JM:After reading the first review of Zanganeh's book, by C.Ciuraru, I got the impression that this text on Nabokov as an "Enchanter" (fitfully distanced from the title chosen for the putative Ur-Lolita) was a kind of biography of Dmitri Nabokov (with a special description of the 77 year-old illustrious son being offered in another, not as positive, review: "I looked at Dmitri's clear blue gaze, tuned in to the grain of his voice,so close to his father's as one may catch it in recordings."), inserted inside what also could seem, at first, to be the narrator's ("a creative reader") autobiography.
The promise of seeing formerly undivulged Nabokov family's photographs is enticing enough for Nabokov devotees.
"Now 'happy' is something extremely subjective. One of our sillier Zemblan proverbs says: the lost glove is happy."* (PF) Tto do Nabokov justice, I remain with James Camp's observation: "...it is true, Nabokov does rapture better than just about any other writer, ever. (He does rape, sadism and suicide pretty well, too.) and with A.Therouxh's sentence: "What Nabokov valued, perhaps above all else, was what he could preserve in memory and save from oblivion. He located and fixed the past in much the way that in his lepidopteral experiments he fixed hisbeloved butterflies..."
I might have strayed from these two reviewers points (because Nabokov almost always metamorphs me into "a lost glove"), had I not just finished reading the painful dark-comedy sequence from "The Defence", Ch. Nine. It is vaguely reminiscent of a scene in the Marx Brother's movie, "A Night at the Opera," which Nabokov explicitly admired **
"The sidewalk skidded, reared up at a right angle and swayed back again....'I'm telling you Karl is there,' repeated Günther sulkily. And truly a man was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk with his head lowered. They miscalculated their impetus and were carried past. When they succeeded in approaching him the man smacked his lips and slowly turned toward them... 'Here's another,' said Kurt. A fat man without a hat lay all hunched up on the sidewalk, beside a garden fence. 'That's probably Pulvermacher,' muttered Kurt....The man was evidently sound asleep..'Let's wait for a taxi,' said Kurt and followed the example of Karl, who had squatted on the curbing....'Bac berepom,' read Kurt mistaking the Russian letters for Latin ones, which was excusable...On the door large chess squares — the blazon of Berlin taxis — showed in the light of the streetlamp. Finally the jam-packed motorcar moved off....A key grated in the lock and the door opened. On the sidewalk with his back to the steps lay a stout man in black.Meanwhile the staircase continued to spawn people.... They were seen at once in all the rooms...They were found on all the divans, in the bathroom and on the trunk in the hallway, and there was no way of getting rid of them. Their number was unclear — a fluctuating, blurred number. But after a while they disappeared..."
Luzhin's tormented relation with external reality and with thechallenges he found in some games of chess are masterful renderings of mental anguish. One can almost follow the meanderings of anguish and befuddlement from inside the mad person's mind while, at the same time, we can also see how comic this may appear to passers-by (even the well-wishing ones).
In fact, as I see it, Nabokov's works are about two extremes: ecstasy and pain and not really about "happiness.".
..............................................................................................................................................................................
# - Excerpts: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2011/05/02/the_exquisite_pleasures_of_being_nabokov/
A satisfying look at Nabokov, the literary ‘Enchanter’ by Carmela Ciuraru. May 2, 2011: "To seek a greater understanding of happiness by way of Vladimir Nabokov is no typical self-help path, to say the least. Yet that’s what author Lila Azam Zanganeh attempts in “The Enchanter,’’ a witty, illuminating examination of desire, fulfillment, and passion in Nabokov’s work and life. ...One of the book’s greatest virtues is that the author cultivated a connection with Nabokov’s son (and only child), Dmitri, who is now 77. He is a fascinating character: an opera singer, a translator, a former race car driver, and the zealous guardian of his father’s legacy and literary estate. He generously provides some of the beautiful family photographs seen in this book, and shares intimate memories of what it was like to be the son of a literary giant. Clearly, he was impressed enough by Azam Zanganeh’s devotion and intellect to offer such access."
http://www.observer.com/2011/culture/what-can-you-tell-fancy-prose-style What Can You Tell From a Fancy Prose Style?By James Camp May 3, 2011
...Lila Azam Zanganeh's The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness (Norton, 228 pages, $23.95)...is something of a collage. There are paraphrases, biographical vignettes, interviews and drawings. There are also kooky components, like dream sequences. There are also kinky components...
From these disparate parts, the contours of a single idea emerge. Roughly, this is it: "VN's happiness is a singular way of seeing, marveling, and grasping, in other words, of netting the light particles around us." ..."How did he do it? "It has to do with the wiles of a new language," she hints....Something to do with language...Ms. Zanganeh has interviewed Nabokov's son, Dimitri, and she has made pilgrimages to various sites sacred to Nabokovians, where she recorded her impressions.... The Enchanter is a book that is mostly about reading other books... wonderful anecdotes, and all appear in The Enchanter. None of them is originally Ms. Zanganeh's...All the show pieces in this book are out on loan....What remains is Ms. Zanganeh's thesis on happiness. And it is true, Nabokov does rapture better than just about any other writer, ever. (He does rape, sadism and suicide pretty well, too.) Alas, Nabokovians tend to interact awkwardly with the conventions of literary criticism...Creative reading, as she means it, describes the attempt to channel a great writer's authority by imitating him in your writing about his writing. It is a form that is like pastiche, but equally like karaoke...Nabokov ...said: "Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash."....Here is Ms. Zanganeh: "To observant men, these Nabokovian patterns, magically, will offer the inkling of an 'otherworld,' the ineffable beauty and concord of which is cause for infinite happiness." The most compelling statement of this position appears in Nabokov's book on Gogol, where he defines art as "the dazzling combination of drab parts." (Adam Thirlwell made this phrase the leitmotif of his excellent recent book The Delighted States.)This point about drabness tends to get lost. Nabokovians talk about patterns, but what their writing usually suggests is an obsession with décor. Instead of dazzling combinations of drab parts, we get drab combinations of dazzling parts. ... "Don't be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov," Geoff Dyer wrote in The Guardian last year. In 1969, in the midst of givingAda a bad review, John Updike noted, "This deadly style is infectious!" Updike thought Nabokov's style had gone sour; but he was imitating it anyway, helplessly. "We read to reenchant the world," Ms. Zanganeh declares. And so we do. But the unromantic truth may be that successful writing, even if done in the name of creative reading, requires disenchantment. If you are going to cast a spell, you cannot be under one yourself."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703551304576261481445813412.html?mod=googlenews_ws
Trouble With Ardor by Alexander Therouuxh: "Happiness is not the first word that comes to my mind when the name VladimirNabokov is invoked. A genius but also a snob and curmudgeon, Nabokov wasfrequently competitive and unkind, belittling the likes of Faulkner,Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Jane Austen, Cervantes, Hemingway and HenryJames. (In the early 1970s, when asked by an interviewer, "What is yourposition in the world of letters?" Nabokov replied: "Jolly good view from uphere.") He went to war over matters of translation and "topical trash." He rejected edits with devilish diligence. "I carry proudly my ineffablehappiness," he once boasted, and gasconading may well bring pleasure...For Lila Azam Zanganeh, the "experience of happiness" is to be found in readingNabokov...Throughout "The Enchanter," Ms. Zanganeh appropriates Nabokov's arch and ornate phrases and strains to capture his style in what one assumes to be an attempt at homage...Adopting the persona of a "creative reader,"Ms.Zanganeh explores the magical worlds of three of Nabokov's major works... grabs details from Brian Boyd's biography of Nabokov, from Nabokov's own interviews and from her encounters with Dmitri, Nabokov's son and literary executor, whom she hunts down, interviews and frankly exalts."I looked at Dmitri's clear blue gaze, tuned in to the grain of his voice,so close to his father's as one may catch it in recordings."...Oversimplying the Nabokovian equation, Ms. Zanganeh sees this Russian-American author almost exclusively as "the great writer of happiness."... At one point, Ms.Zanganeh unabashedly confesses that she proceeded to buy a net and shorts to go out catching butterflies.But she misses the core. What Nabokov valued, perhaps above all else, was what he could preserve in memory and save from oblivion. He located and fixed the past in much the way that in his lepidopteral experiments he fixed hisbeloved butterflies..."
* "You’ll be happy to know, Dr. Kinbote, that Professor So-and-so [one of the members of the Shade committee] has consented to act as our adviser in editing the stuff."Of students’ papers:
Now "happy" is something extremely subjective. One of our sillier Zemblan proverbs says: the lost glove is happy. Promptly I refastened the catch of my briefcase and betook myself to another publisher.
Another reference to "Happiness" in Pale Fire: "I am generally very benevolent [said Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive." Kinbote: "For instance?" "Not having read the required book. Having read it like an idiot. Looking in it for symbols; example: ‘The author uses the striking image green leaves because green is the symbol of happiness and frustration.’ I am also in the habit of lowering a student’s mark catastrophically if he uses ‘simple’ and ‘sincere’ in a commendatory sense; examples: ‘Shelley’s style is always very simple and good’; or ‘Yeats is always sincere.’
** "The Marx Brothers were wonderful. The opera, the crowded cabin [A Night at the Opera], which is pure genius… I must have seen that film three times!" www.jstor.org/stable/1345118
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JM:After reading the first review of Zanganeh's book, by C.Ciuraru, I got the impression that this text on Nabokov as an "Enchanter" (fitfully distanced from the title chosen for the putative Ur-Lolita) was a kind of biography of Dmitri Nabokov (with a special description of the 77 year-old illustrious son being offered in another, not as positive, review: "I looked at Dmitri's clear blue gaze, tuned in to the grain of his voice,so close to his father's as one may catch it in recordings."), inserted inside what also could seem, at first, to be the narrator's ("a creative reader") autobiography.
The promise of seeing formerly undivulged Nabokov family's photographs is enticing enough for Nabokov devotees.
"Now 'happy' is something extremely subjective. One of our sillier Zemblan proverbs says: the lost glove is happy."* (PF) Tto do Nabokov justice, I remain with James Camp's observation: "...it is true, Nabokov does rapture better than just about any other writer, ever. (He does rape, sadism and suicide pretty well, too.) and with A.Therouxh's sentence: "What Nabokov valued, perhaps above all else, was what he could preserve in memory and save from oblivion. He located and fixed the past in much the way that in his lepidopteral experiments he fixed hisbeloved butterflies..."
I might have strayed from these two reviewers points (because Nabokov almost always metamorphs me into "a lost glove"), had I not just finished reading the painful dark-comedy sequence from "The Defence", Ch. Nine. It is vaguely reminiscent of a scene in the Marx Brother's movie, "A Night at the Opera," which Nabokov explicitly admired **
"The sidewalk skidded, reared up at a right angle and swayed back again....'I'm telling you Karl is there,' repeated Günther sulkily. And truly a man was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk with his head lowered. They miscalculated their impetus and were carried past. When they succeeded in approaching him the man smacked his lips and slowly turned toward them... 'Here's another,' said Kurt. A fat man without a hat lay all hunched up on the sidewalk, beside a garden fence. 'That's probably Pulvermacher,' muttered Kurt....The man was evidently sound asleep..'Let's wait for a taxi,' said Kurt and followed the example of Karl, who had squatted on the curbing....'Bac berepom,' read Kurt mistaking the Russian letters for Latin ones, which was excusable...On the door large chess squares — the blazon of Berlin taxis — showed in the light of the streetlamp. Finally the jam-packed motorcar moved off....A key grated in the lock and the door opened. On the sidewalk with his back to the steps lay a stout man in black.Meanwhile the staircase continued to spawn people.... They were seen at once in all the rooms...They were found on all the divans, in the bathroom and on the trunk in the hallway, and there was no way of getting rid of them. Their number was unclear — a fluctuating, blurred number. But after a while they disappeared..."
Luzhin's tormented relation with external reality and with thechallenges he found in some games of chess are masterful renderings of mental anguish. One can almost follow the meanderings of anguish and befuddlement from inside the mad person's mind while, at the same time, we can also see how comic this may appear to passers-by (even the well-wishing ones).
In fact, as I see it, Nabokov's works are about two extremes: ecstasy and pain and not really about "happiness.".
..............................................................................................................................................................................
# - Excerpts: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2011/05/02/the_exquisite_pleasures_of_being_nabokov/
A satisfying look at Nabokov, the literary ‘Enchanter’ by Carmela Ciuraru. May 2, 2011: "To seek a greater understanding of happiness by way of Vladimir Nabokov is no typical self-help path, to say the least. Yet that’s what author Lila Azam Zanganeh attempts in “The Enchanter,’’ a witty, illuminating examination of desire, fulfillment, and passion in Nabokov’s work and life. ...One of the book’s greatest virtues is that the author cultivated a connection with Nabokov’s son (and only child), Dmitri, who is now 77. He is a fascinating character: an opera singer, a translator, a former race car driver, and the zealous guardian of his father’s legacy and literary estate. He generously provides some of the beautiful family photographs seen in this book, and shares intimate memories of what it was like to be the son of a literary giant. Clearly, he was impressed enough by Azam Zanganeh’s devotion and intellect to offer such access."
http://www.observer.com/2011/culture/what-can-you-tell-fancy-prose-style What Can You Tell From a Fancy Prose Style?By James Camp May 3, 2011
...Lila Azam Zanganeh's The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness (Norton, 228 pages, $23.95)...is something of a collage. There are paraphrases, biographical vignettes, interviews and drawings. There are also kooky components, like dream sequences. There are also kinky components...
From these disparate parts, the contours of a single idea emerge. Roughly, this is it: "VN's happiness is a singular way of seeing, marveling, and grasping, in other words, of netting the light particles around us." ..."How did he do it? "It has to do with the wiles of a new language," she hints....Something to do with language...Ms. Zanganeh has interviewed Nabokov's son, Dimitri, and she has made pilgrimages to various sites sacred to Nabokovians, where she recorded her impressions.... The Enchanter is a book that is mostly about reading other books... wonderful anecdotes, and all appear in The Enchanter. None of them is originally Ms. Zanganeh's...All the show pieces in this book are out on loan....What remains is Ms. Zanganeh's thesis on happiness. And it is true, Nabokov does rapture better than just about any other writer, ever. (He does rape, sadism and suicide pretty well, too.) Alas, Nabokovians tend to interact awkwardly with the conventions of literary criticism...Creative reading, as she means it, describes the attempt to channel a great writer's authority by imitating him in your writing about his writing. It is a form that is like pastiche, but equally like karaoke...Nabokov ...said: "Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash."....Here is Ms. Zanganeh: "To observant men, these Nabokovian patterns, magically, will offer the inkling of an 'otherworld,' the ineffable beauty and concord of which is cause for infinite happiness." The most compelling statement of this position appears in Nabokov's book on Gogol, where he defines art as "the dazzling combination of drab parts." (Adam Thirlwell made this phrase the leitmotif of his excellent recent book The Delighted States.)This point about drabness tends to get lost. Nabokovians talk about patterns, but what their writing usually suggests is an obsession with décor. Instead of dazzling combinations of drab parts, we get drab combinations of dazzling parts. ... "Don't be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov," Geoff Dyer wrote in The Guardian last year. In 1969, in the midst of givingAda a bad review, John Updike noted, "This deadly style is infectious!" Updike thought Nabokov's style had gone sour; but he was imitating it anyway, helplessly. "We read to reenchant the world," Ms. Zanganeh declares. And so we do. But the unromantic truth may be that successful writing, even if done in the name of creative reading, requires disenchantment. If you are going to cast a spell, you cannot be under one yourself."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703551304576261481445813412.html?mod=googlenews_ws
Trouble With Ardor by Alexander Therouuxh: "Happiness is not the first word that comes to my mind when the name VladimirNabokov is invoked. A genius but also a snob and curmudgeon, Nabokov wasfrequently competitive and unkind, belittling the likes of Faulkner,Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Jane Austen, Cervantes, Hemingway and HenryJames. (In the early 1970s, when asked by an interviewer, "What is yourposition in the world of letters?" Nabokov replied: "Jolly good view from uphere.") He went to war over matters of translation and "topical trash." He rejected edits with devilish diligence. "I carry proudly my ineffablehappiness," he once boasted, and gasconading may well bring pleasure...For Lila Azam Zanganeh, the "experience of happiness" is to be found in readingNabokov...Throughout "The Enchanter," Ms. Zanganeh appropriates Nabokov's arch and ornate phrases and strains to capture his style in what one assumes to be an attempt at homage...Adopting the persona of a "creative reader,"Ms.Zanganeh explores the magical worlds of three of Nabokov's major works... grabs details from Brian Boyd's biography of Nabokov, from Nabokov's own interviews and from her encounters with Dmitri, Nabokov's son and literary executor, whom she hunts down, interviews and frankly exalts."I looked at Dmitri's clear blue gaze, tuned in to the grain of his voice,so close to his father's as one may catch it in recordings."...Oversimplying the Nabokovian equation, Ms. Zanganeh sees this Russian-American author almost exclusively as "the great writer of happiness."... At one point, Ms.Zanganeh unabashedly confesses that she proceeded to buy a net and shorts to go out catching butterflies.But she misses the core. What Nabokov valued, perhaps above all else, was what he could preserve in memory and save from oblivion. He located and fixed the past in much the way that in his lepidopteral experiments he fixed hisbeloved butterflies..."
* "You’ll be happy to know, Dr. Kinbote, that Professor So-and-so [one of the members of the Shade committee] has consented to act as our adviser in editing the stuff."Of students’ papers:
Now "happy" is something extremely subjective. One of our sillier Zemblan proverbs says: the lost glove is happy. Promptly I refastened the catch of my briefcase and betook myself to another publisher.
Another reference to "Happiness" in Pale Fire: "I am generally very benevolent [said Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive." Kinbote: "For instance?" "Not having read the required book. Having read it like an idiot. Looking in it for symbols; example: ‘The author uses the striking image green leaves because green is the symbol of happiness and frustration.’ I am also in the habit of lowering a student’s mark catastrophically if he uses ‘simple’ and ‘sincere’ in a commendatory sense; examples: ‘Shelley’s style is always very simple and good’; or ‘Yeats is always sincere.’
** "The Marx Brothers were wonderful. The opera, the crowded cabin [A Night at the Opera], which is pure genius… I must have seen that film three times!" www.jstor.org/stable/1345118
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/