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[SIGHTING] Lolita and Salter's last novel "All there is"
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I found a review by John Self of James Salter's novel "All there is"
[https://theasylum.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/james-salter-all-that-is/] while
I was looking for its passing reference to Nabokovs Lolita, to quote it
at the VN-L ( I have only the translation of Tudo que é and not the
original in English). The reviewer casually refers to how the author
lords it over the reader in his reassuringly omniscient voice before he
continues: James Salter
has no care for holding to a characters restricted viewpoint, but is
happy to direct and instruct the reader in all manner of details. One
example is when Vivian, here aged eight, has a conversation with her mother
Caroline about inviting some older boys over. After their exchange there is
a passage which begins in Carolines head then switches quickly to an
authorial aside, before slipping back into the story: The age of imitation
when there are no dangers though it depended. In the past, girls might be
married at twelve, queens-to-be knelt to be wed even younger, Poes wife was
a child of thirteen, Samuel Pepys only fifteen, Machado the great poet of
Spain fell madly in love with Leonor Izquierdo when she was thirteen, Lolita
was twelve, and Dantes goddess Beatrice even younger. Vivian knew as little
as any of them and then he notes: If Dan Brown did this, it would be
considered an infodump from a guidebook and roundly mocked. Somehow, perhaps
through reputation combined with the elegance of his style, Salter not only
gets away with it but makes these asides into some of the highlights of the
book. Perhaps this is what Martin Amis meant when he described reading the
best books as being a transfusion from above.
Could this quote be considered at all as a kind of infodump from a
guidebook? I thought it was a clever, amusing sentence. I underlined it not
because I simply encountered a reference to Lolita among various other
little girls, in one of its paragraphs, but because these lines express a
particularly Nabokovian mood: with the exception of Lolita, all the other
young girls were real, i.e. truly loved by, or married to the poets and
writers he selected ( Poe, Pepys, Machado, Dante). Fictional Lolita was
included in the set just as VN sometimes chose to mingle facts and
fiction although only ADAs Charles Nicot and Captain Tobakoff come to
my mind now. It takes a magician to recognize another.*
[his reference to Nabokovs style may be confirmed a few pages later (still
on chapter 5), by the reproduction of editor Baums qualms regarding a book
written by a Polish author named Aronsky (Baum is the central characters
boss) since, according to Baum, Aronsky messes up the novelistic dimension
of truth].
.
* Salter, James: "An Old Magician Named Nabokov Writes and Lives in Splendid
Exile" (Conducted in Montreux, winter of 1975). People Weekly (New York),
17-Mar-75, pp. 60-64. ] reported by Dieter Zimmer in
<http://www.d-e-zimmer.de/HTML/NABinterviews.htm>
http://www.d-e-zimmer.de/HTML/NABinterviews.htm . This same interview
related to James Salters encounter with V.Nabokov was recently mentioned at
the VN-L at another link:
<http://www.vogue.com/13275109/james-salter-remembers-vladimir-nabokov/>
http://www.vogue.com/13275109/james-salter-remembers-vladimir-nabokov/
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
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[https://theasylum.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/james-salter-all-that-is/] while
I was looking for its passing reference to Nabokovs Lolita, to quote it
at the VN-L ( I have only the translation of Tudo que é and not the
original in English). The reviewer casually refers to how the author
lords it over the reader in his reassuringly omniscient voice before he
continues: James Salter
has no care for holding to a characters restricted viewpoint, but is
happy to direct and instruct the reader in all manner of details. One
example is when Vivian, here aged eight, has a conversation with her mother
Caroline about inviting some older boys over. After their exchange there is
a passage which begins in Carolines head then switches quickly to an
authorial aside, before slipping back into the story: The age of imitation
when there are no dangers though it depended. In the past, girls might be
married at twelve, queens-to-be knelt to be wed even younger, Poes wife was
a child of thirteen, Samuel Pepys only fifteen, Machado the great poet of
Spain fell madly in love with Leonor Izquierdo when she was thirteen, Lolita
was twelve, and Dantes goddess Beatrice even younger. Vivian knew as little
as any of them and then he notes: If Dan Brown did this, it would be
considered an infodump from a guidebook and roundly mocked. Somehow, perhaps
through reputation combined with the elegance of his style, Salter not only
gets away with it but makes these asides into some of the highlights of the
book. Perhaps this is what Martin Amis meant when he described reading the
best books as being a transfusion from above.
Could this quote be considered at all as a kind of infodump from a
guidebook? I thought it was a clever, amusing sentence. I underlined it not
because I simply encountered a reference to Lolita among various other
little girls, in one of its paragraphs, but because these lines express a
particularly Nabokovian mood: with the exception of Lolita, all the other
young girls were real, i.e. truly loved by, or married to the poets and
writers he selected ( Poe, Pepys, Machado, Dante). Fictional Lolita was
included in the set just as VN sometimes chose to mingle facts and
fiction although only ADAs Charles Nicot and Captain Tobakoff come to
my mind now. It takes a magician to recognize another.*
[his reference to Nabokovs style may be confirmed a few pages later (still
on chapter 5), by the reproduction of editor Baums qualms regarding a book
written by a Polish author named Aronsky (Baum is the central characters
boss) since, according to Baum, Aronsky messes up the novelistic dimension
of truth].
.
* Salter, James: "An Old Magician Named Nabokov Writes and Lives in Splendid
Exile" (Conducted in Montreux, winter of 1975). People Weekly (New York),
17-Mar-75, pp. 60-64. ] reported by Dieter Zimmer in
<http://www.d-e-zimmer.de/HTML/NABinterviews.htm>
http://www.d-e-zimmer.de/HTML/NABinterviews.htm . This same interview
related to James Salters encounter with V.Nabokov was recently mentioned at
the VN-L at another link:
<http://www.vogue.com/13275109/james-salter-remembers-vladimir-nabokov/>
http://www.vogue.com/13275109/james-salter-remembers-vladimir-nabokov/
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L