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Re: [SIGHTING] Lolita and Salter's last novel "All there is"
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Also, the reviewer seems not to have noticed that the sentence itself is an homage to Lolita directly echoing Humbert's little list of under-thirteens, which included both and Dante's Beatrice as well without the caveat that Dante was Beatrice's same age.
Here is a lengthy quote from my Library of America edition of Lolita, pgs 16-17 "Marriage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East Indian provinces. Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds. After all Dante fell madly in love with his Beatrice when she was nine, a sparkling girleen, painted and lovely, and bejeweled, in a crimson frock, and this was in 1274, in Florence, at a private feast in the merry month of May. And when Petrarch fell madly in love with his Laureen, she was fair-haired nymphet of twelve running in the wind, in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight, in the beautiful plain as descried from the hills of Vaucluse." Also, on page 100, "Oh, Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe's and Bea Dante's..." This is when Hum is buy clothes for Lo after Charlotte's death when he goes to get her from camp Q. Anyway it seems obvious Salter had Nabokov's book specifically in mind. It isn't an info-dump in the ordinary sense that this term refers to narrative information or exposition while the type of thing Salter seems to be doing is elaboration and justification, which what Humbert is doing but might be odd in third person, one would have to read the quote in context.
On Friday, July 10, 2015 7:30 AM, Jansy Mello <jansy.mello@OUTLOOK.COM> wrote:
[NABOKV-L] [SIGHTING] Lolita and Salter's last novel "All there is" and other issues<!--#yiv6955042921 _filtered #yiv6955042921 {font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv6955042921 {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv6955042921 {font-family:Verdana;panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}#yiv6955042921 #yiv6955042921 p.yiv6955042921MsoNormal, #yiv6955042921 li.yiv6955042921MsoNormal, #yiv6955042921 div.yiv6955042921MsoNormal {margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;}#yiv6955042921 a:link, #yiv6955042921 span.yiv6955042921MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv6955042921 a:visited, #yiv6955042921 span.yiv6955042921MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv6955042921 p {margin-right:0cm;margin-left:0cm;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;}#yiv6955042921 span.yiv6955042921EstiloDeEmail18 {font-family:"Calibri", sans-serif;color:#1F497D;}#yiv6955042921 .yiv6955042921MsoChpDefault {font-size:10.0pt;} _filtered #yiv6955042921 {margin:70.85pt 3.0cm 70.85pt 3.0cm;}#yiv6955042921 div.yiv6955042921WordSection1 {}-->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 Nabokov’s “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 character’s 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 Caroline’s 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, Poe’s 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 Dante’s 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 ADA’s “Charles Nicot and Captain Tobakoff” come to my mind now. It takes a magician to recognize another.* [his reference to Nabokov’s style may be confirmed a few pages later (still on chapter 5), by the reproduction of editor Baum’s qualms regarding a book written by a Polish author named Aronsky (Baum is the central character’s 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 . This same interview related to James Salter’s encounter with V.Nabokov was recently mentioned at the VN-L at another link: http://www.vogue.com/13275109/james-salter-remembers-vladimir-nabokov/
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Here is a lengthy quote from my Library of America edition of Lolita, pgs 16-17 "Marriage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East Indian provinces. Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds. After all Dante fell madly in love with his Beatrice when she was nine, a sparkling girleen, painted and lovely, and bejeweled, in a crimson frock, and this was in 1274, in Florence, at a private feast in the merry month of May. And when Petrarch fell madly in love with his Laureen, she was fair-haired nymphet of twelve running in the wind, in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight, in the beautiful plain as descried from the hills of Vaucluse." Also, on page 100, "Oh, Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe's and Bea Dante's..." This is when Hum is buy clothes for Lo after Charlotte's death when he goes to get her from camp Q. Anyway it seems obvious Salter had Nabokov's book specifically in mind. It isn't an info-dump in the ordinary sense that this term refers to narrative information or exposition while the type of thing Salter seems to be doing is elaboration and justification, which what Humbert is doing but might be odd in third person, one would have to read the quote in context.
On Friday, July 10, 2015 7:30 AM, Jansy Mello <jansy.mello@OUTLOOK.COM> wrote:
[NABOKV-L] [SIGHTING] Lolita and Salter's last novel "All there is" and other issues<!--#yiv6955042921 _filtered #yiv6955042921 {font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv6955042921 {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv6955042921 {font-family:Verdana;panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}#yiv6955042921 #yiv6955042921 p.yiv6955042921MsoNormal, #yiv6955042921 li.yiv6955042921MsoNormal, #yiv6955042921 div.yiv6955042921MsoNormal {margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;}#yiv6955042921 a:link, #yiv6955042921 span.yiv6955042921MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv6955042921 a:visited, #yiv6955042921 span.yiv6955042921MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv6955042921 p {margin-right:0cm;margin-left:0cm;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;}#yiv6955042921 span.yiv6955042921EstiloDeEmail18 {font-family:"Calibri", sans-serif;color:#1F497D;}#yiv6955042921 .yiv6955042921MsoChpDefault {font-size:10.0pt;} _filtered #yiv6955042921 {margin:70.85pt 3.0cm 70.85pt 3.0cm;}#yiv6955042921 div.yiv6955042921WordSection1 {}-->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 Nabokov’s “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 character’s 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 Caroline’s 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, Poe’s 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 Dante’s 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 ADA’s “Charles Nicot and Captain Tobakoff” come to my mind now. It takes a magician to recognize another.* [his reference to Nabokov’s style may be confirmed a few pages later (still on chapter 5), by the reproduction of editor Baum’s qualms regarding a book written by a Polish author named Aronsky (Baum is the central character’s 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 . This same interview related to James Salter’s encounter with V.Nabokov was recently mentioned at the VN-L at another link: http://www.vogue.com/13275109/james-salter-remembers-vladimir-nabokov/
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the Editors | NOJ | Zembla | Nabokv-L
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Search archive with Google:
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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
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Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
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