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Re: [NABOKOV-L] TOoL review
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Jansy: *My old fashioned passion remains faithful to Nabokov's genius as an
enchanter. *
Jansy, you've said it yourself: your passion is old fashioned. Brian Boyd's
masterful and loving essay stresses a new fashioned Nabokov, albeit a
fragmentary one. I don't understand why you would like to find in TOoL what
Nabokov has already given you in Lolita, Ada, Pale Fire. Let Nabokov's
change clear your eyes 'with euphrasy and rue', like Milton's Adam's eyes by
the angel Michael. It is not to the reader to shape the writer, it is up to
the writer to form and surprise the reader. And if Nabokov does that, to
surprise, - which, to me, he does, and as he does to Brian Boyd -, even in
an unfinished novel, there can only be room for praise. If there is a sense
of dissapointment, it is not Nabokov who has let us down, for when and what
did he promise us? If anything, delight, and the whole change in Boyd's
attitude towards TOoL is a very strong and moving illustration of this:
re-discovered delight!
Best,
Hafid Bouazza
.
2010/3/9 Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
> *Sandy Klein* sends a link (
> http://www.theamericanscholar.org/nabokov-lives-on/ ) to Brian Boyd's "*Nabokov
> Lives On*," where he explains "*why his unfinished novel, Laura, deserved
> to be published*" and discloses " what's left in the voluminous archive of
> his unpublished work."
>
> Brian Boyd observes that "*The Original of Laura could have been published
> badly, as if it were a new Lolita or at least a new Pnin. Instead it was
> better published than I could have imagined*," but he forgets that many
> Nabokov readers will only have access to often defective translations. There
> is also "Playboy's" TOoL, or its future re-editions, to consider. The
> luxurious first-edition, often described as an "objet d'art," shall
> probably become a reliquary for this novel's material (facsimile) cards, its
> shape and texture intimately linked to the written words it holds.
>
> For B.Boyd the reader needs to "*forget the tension of Lolita or the
> ecstatic, 'passionate pump-joy' release of Ada; forget, above all,
> the romance of first love in Speak, Memory or in Mary,*" to be able to
> grasp TOoL's innovative qualities: Nabokov's feat, in TOoL, derives from his
> having inverted "*what he values most, but, as always, in a new way. He
> inverts love as a path to self-transcendence ...Flora-as sterility goddess
> wiping the sperm off her groin....Art becomes not a way to
> self-transcendence here but, rather, the vengeful obliteration of others or
> the skulking effacement of the tattletale self*." Wild's "*whole
> obsessive quest seems an apotheosis of self and of stasis, a self-fixated
> and self-enclosed attempt to circumvent the limits to the self that death
> imposes*"...If art "*can offer a kind of immortality, a different promise
> of transcending death..." *the reader won't find it in TOoL: *"not here,
> not in this novel*," as B.Boyd concludes. But he also notes that "*Nabokov
> has hidden under our noses the beating core of tenderness in this
> apparently heartlessly hard novel: Flora as potential Daisy, not as Lolita,
> is one of this novel's "secret points,"* relating the paragraphs about
> the barber of Kasbeam, to equally incidental Hubert H. Hubert and
> his pathos.
>
> For Boyd, humankind has "*evolved into a storytelling species, and that
> the main reason we have done so is because stories improve still further the
> social cognition..*." and that which "*constitutes the distinctively
> Nabokovian...**may be most extraordinary not so much as prose but as
> story...**No one has taken this further than Nabokov does in his last
> novel.*" As I see it, there's no better example for Nabokov's
> ingenious shifts of perspective, in TOoL, than to contrast the
> present storytelling project with the one that had been entertained by
> the younger Nabokov, in his biography of Gogol (NG:78), when he states
> that it is the enchanter, *“**more than the yarn-spinner or the teacher*"
> who interests him, or “*the remarkable phenomenon of mere forms of speech
> directly giving rise to live creatures*” in Gogol, and Shakespeare’s “*verbal
> poetical texture…immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays
> ." *
>
> Perhaps Wilde's solipsism is contagious to some of his unfortunate readers,
> since I have no intention to "forget," not even momentarily, Lolita, Ada,
> Machenka and Speak, Memory and be ready to appreciate TOoL's novelties
> and improve my social-cognitive abilities. My old fashioned passion remains
> faithful to Nabokov's genius as an enchanter.
> Search the archive<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en> Contact
> the Editors <nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu> Visit "Nabokov
> Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com> Visit Zembla<http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View
> Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage
> subscription options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
> co-editors.
>
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/
enchanter. *
Jansy, you've said it yourself: your passion is old fashioned. Brian Boyd's
masterful and loving essay stresses a new fashioned Nabokov, albeit a
fragmentary one. I don't understand why you would like to find in TOoL what
Nabokov has already given you in Lolita, Ada, Pale Fire. Let Nabokov's
change clear your eyes 'with euphrasy and rue', like Milton's Adam's eyes by
the angel Michael. It is not to the reader to shape the writer, it is up to
the writer to form and surprise the reader. And if Nabokov does that, to
surprise, - which, to me, he does, and as he does to Brian Boyd -, even in
an unfinished novel, there can only be room for praise. If there is a sense
of dissapointment, it is not Nabokov who has let us down, for when and what
did he promise us? If anything, delight, and the whole change in Boyd's
attitude towards TOoL is a very strong and moving illustration of this:
re-discovered delight!
Best,
Hafid Bouazza
.
2010/3/9 Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
> *Sandy Klein* sends a link (
> http://www.theamericanscholar.org/nabokov-lives-on/ ) to Brian Boyd's "*Nabokov
> Lives On*," where he explains "*why his unfinished novel, Laura, deserved
> to be published*" and discloses " what's left in the voluminous archive of
> his unpublished work."
>
> Brian Boyd observes that "*The Original of Laura could have been published
> badly, as if it were a new Lolita or at least a new Pnin. Instead it was
> better published than I could have imagined*," but he forgets that many
> Nabokov readers will only have access to often defective translations. There
> is also "Playboy's" TOoL, or its future re-editions, to consider. The
> luxurious first-edition, often described as an "objet d'art," shall
> probably become a reliquary for this novel's material (facsimile) cards, its
> shape and texture intimately linked to the written words it holds.
>
> For B.Boyd the reader needs to "*forget the tension of Lolita or the
> ecstatic, 'passionate pump-joy' release of Ada; forget, above all,
> the romance of first love in Speak, Memory or in Mary,*" to be able to
> grasp TOoL's innovative qualities: Nabokov's feat, in TOoL, derives from his
> having inverted "*what he values most, but, as always, in a new way. He
> inverts love as a path to self-transcendence ...Flora-as sterility goddess
> wiping the sperm off her groin....Art becomes not a way to
> self-transcendence here but, rather, the vengeful obliteration of others or
> the skulking effacement of the tattletale self*." Wild's "*whole
> obsessive quest seems an apotheosis of self and of stasis, a self-fixated
> and self-enclosed attempt to circumvent the limits to the self that death
> imposes*"...If art "*can offer a kind of immortality, a different promise
> of transcending death..." *the reader won't find it in TOoL: *"not here,
> not in this novel*," as B.Boyd concludes. But he also notes that "*Nabokov
> has hidden under our noses the beating core of tenderness in this
> apparently heartlessly hard novel: Flora as potential Daisy, not as Lolita,
> is one of this novel's "secret points,"* relating the paragraphs about
> the barber of Kasbeam, to equally incidental Hubert H. Hubert and
> his pathos.
>
> For Boyd, humankind has "*evolved into a storytelling species, and that
> the main reason we have done so is because stories improve still further the
> social cognition..*." and that which "*constitutes the distinctively
> Nabokovian...**may be most extraordinary not so much as prose but as
> story...**No one has taken this further than Nabokov does in his last
> novel.*" As I see it, there's no better example for Nabokov's
> ingenious shifts of perspective, in TOoL, than to contrast the
> present storytelling project with the one that had been entertained by
> the younger Nabokov, in his biography of Gogol (NG:78), when he states
> that it is the enchanter, *“**more than the yarn-spinner or the teacher*"
> who interests him, or “*the remarkable phenomenon of mere forms of speech
> directly giving rise to live creatures*” in Gogol, and Shakespeare’s “*verbal
> poetical texture…immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays
> ." *
>
> Perhaps Wilde's solipsism is contagious to some of his unfortunate readers,
> since I have no intention to "forget," not even momentarily, Lolita, Ada,
> Machenka and Speak, Memory and be ready to appreciate TOoL's novelties
> and improve my social-cognitive abilities. My old fashioned passion remains
> faithful to Nabokov's genius as an enchanter.
> Search the archive<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en> Contact
> the Editors <nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu> Visit "Nabokov
> Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com> Visit Zembla<http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View
> Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage
> subscription options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
> co-editors.
>
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/