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RES: [NABOKV-L] Was Nabokov a Hebephile\Ephebophile?
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A.Stadlen: "I can see Jansy's point, but in a way it makes me all the more
indignant. Is not someone who accepts money to give a public interview and
then becomes an "unreliable interviewee", by lying (in, for example, a
journal for which his admiring readers pay good money), dishonouring his
contract? Of course, it's only an hypothesis that he was lying. But isn't it
fairly clear by now that when Nabokov imagines a character molesting a minor
female he is somehow "interested" in that imagined young girl in a way he
explicitly and expressly pretends, in interviews, he is not.
Perhaps we should have been warned by his admission that his afterword to
the paradigm book for this discussion "may" strike him himself as an
"impersonation" of Vladimir Nabokov talking about his own book."
Jansy Mello: In my opinion "unreliable interviewees" may denounce an excess
of confidence on the written word or question the rights of the public to
certain intimate points of view unexpectedly raised by the interviewer
(recently we got news of VN's very first "innocent" interview after the
success of "L*olita" and how wiser did he become after that initial kiss by
fame). For example, in the early seventies I started to read a few articles
in a very academic British Anthropological Journal (I don't remember its
name) with reputed texts by say, Edmund Leach, Evans Pritchard or
W.H.Goodenough. One of the articles I held in my hands was about a "cultural
body" and there were pictures of a human body dissected into various parts
and the vocabulary couldn't be more technical that it was. Too many years
are past, the details elude me but its satirical spirit still tingles me! It
had the strangest effect at the time since all the other published articles
ended by being read in a slanted critical way I hadn't attempted until then
(the article that came next was about the importance of discarded squash
peels in the Algonquins and I had a difficult time to keep a serious face
while I perused it). I'm often as indignant in relation to some of VN's
evasions as you are now but I never managed a "hold" strong enough that I
could voice them correctly. His "unreliableness" (and that is a matter of
opinion, highly questionable as a generalization) I find it actually quite
admirable!
Search archive with Google:
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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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indignant. Is not someone who accepts money to give a public interview and
then becomes an "unreliable interviewee", by lying (in, for example, a
journal for which his admiring readers pay good money), dishonouring his
contract? Of course, it's only an hypothesis that he was lying. But isn't it
fairly clear by now that when Nabokov imagines a character molesting a minor
female he is somehow "interested" in that imagined young girl in a way he
explicitly and expressly pretends, in interviews, he is not.
Perhaps we should have been warned by his admission that his afterword to
the paradigm book for this discussion "may" strike him himself as an
"impersonation" of Vladimir Nabokov talking about his own book."
Jansy Mello: In my opinion "unreliable interviewees" may denounce an excess
of confidence on the written word or question the rights of the public to
certain intimate points of view unexpectedly raised by the interviewer
(recently we got news of VN's very first "innocent" interview after the
success of "L*olita" and how wiser did he become after that initial kiss by
fame). For example, in the early seventies I started to read a few articles
in a very academic British Anthropological Journal (I don't remember its
name) with reputed texts by say, Edmund Leach, Evans Pritchard or
W.H.Goodenough. One of the articles I held in my hands was about a "cultural
body" and there were pictures of a human body dissected into various parts
and the vocabulary couldn't be more technical that it was. Too many years
are past, the details elude me but its satirical spirit still tingles me! It
had the strangest effect at the time since all the other published articles
ended by being read in a slanted critical way I hadn't attempted until then
(the article that came next was about the importance of discarded squash
peels in the Algonquins and I had a difficult time to keep a serious face
while I perused it). I'm often as indignant in relation to some of VN's
evasions as you are now but I never managed a "hold" strong enough that I
could voice them correctly. His "unreliableness" (and that is a matter of
opinion, highly questionable as a generalization) I find it actually quite
admirable!
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