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Re: Fwd: Banville and Nabokov
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Brian,
From the quote you offer, and the description of the Banville character as
"some kind of academic or critic," it looks to me as if Banville may have
been influenced not so much by Nabokov himself as by the Nabokov character
Charles Kinbote in the novel Pale Fire.
I'm not familiar with Mr. Banville's work, though, so I just throw out this
thought for whatever it may be worth.
Andrew
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 6:58 PM
Subject: Fwd: Banville and Nabokov
> Parallels between Nabokov and John Banville (sardonic tone,
> mischievousness, confessional narrative, unreliable narrators etc.)
> have been noted before, but I am currently reading Banville's _Shroud_,
> whose protagonist (Axel Vander) is quite a dissimulator/unreliable
> narrator. From my reading so far, he seems to have been some kind of
> academic or critic and he offers up this summation. I thought Banville
> could just as easily have had not just himself but Nabokov in mind when
> he wrote the following (notwithstanding the unflattering tail-end of
> this passage?):
>
> '. all were united in acclaiming my mastery of the language, the tone
> and pitch of my singular voice; even my critics, and there were more
> than a few of them, could only stand back and watch in frustration as
> their best barbs skidded off the high gloss of my prose style. This
> surprised as much as it pleased me; how they could not see, in hiding
> behind the brashness and bravado of what I wrote, the trembling
> autodidact hunched over his Webster's, his Chicago Manual, his Grammar
> for Foreign Students? Perhaps it was the very bizarreries of usage
> which
> I unavoidably fell into that they took for the willed eccentricities in
> which they imagined only a lord of language would dare to indulge.'
> (pp.
> 62-63, U.K. Picador edition).
>
> What is more, Axel Vander is almost an anagram (if that's possible) of
> the name of the narrator of the first part of what I believe is a
> trilogy in his previous novel, Eclipse - Alexander Cleave. Indeed, the
> two narrators might be the same person, as Vander infers that he has
> adopted a new identity. And I wonder if that Vander refers to the Van of
> _Ada_?
>
> Brian Howell
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
From the quote you offer, and the description of the Banville character as
"some kind of academic or critic," it looks to me as if Banville may have
been influenced not so much by Nabokov himself as by the Nabokov character
Charles Kinbote in the novel Pale Fire.
I'm not familiar with Mr. Banville's work, though, so I just throw out this
thought for whatever it may be worth.
Andrew
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 6:58 PM
Subject: Fwd: Banville and Nabokov
> Parallels between Nabokov and John Banville (sardonic tone,
> mischievousness, confessional narrative, unreliable narrators etc.)
> have been noted before, but I am currently reading Banville's _Shroud_,
> whose protagonist (Axel Vander) is quite a dissimulator/unreliable
> narrator. From my reading so far, he seems to have been some kind of
> academic or critic and he offers up this summation. I thought Banville
> could just as easily have had not just himself but Nabokov in mind when
> he wrote the following (notwithstanding the unflattering tail-end of
> this passage?):
>
> '. all were united in acclaiming my mastery of the language, the tone
> and pitch of my singular voice; even my critics, and there were more
> than a few of them, could only stand back and watch in frustration as
> their best barbs skidded off the high gloss of my prose style. This
> surprised as much as it pleased me; how they could not see, in hiding
> behind the brashness and bravado of what I wrote, the trembling
> autodidact hunched over his Webster's, his Chicago Manual, his Grammar
> for Foreign Students? Perhaps it was the very bizarreries of usage
> which
> I unavoidably fell into that they took for the willed eccentricities in
> which they imagined only a lord of language would dare to indulge.'
> (pp.
> 62-63, U.K. Picador edition).
>
> What is more, Axel Vander is almost an anagram (if that's possible) of
> the name of the narrator of the first part of what I believe is a
> trilogy in his previous novel, Eclipse - Alexander Cleave. Indeed, the
> two narrators might be the same person, as Vander infers that he has
> adopted a new identity. And I wonder if that Vander refers to the Van of
> _Ada_?
>
> Brian Howell
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----