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Re: Spam: Re: Fw: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
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----- Forwarded message from Andrew.Brown@bbdodetroit.com -----
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 18:04:16 -0500
From: "Brown, Andrew" <Andrew.Brown@bbdodetroit.com>
Reply-To: "Brown, Andrew" <Andrew.Brown@bbdodetroit.com>
Subject: RE: Spam: Re: Fw: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
To Brian Boyd, Care of the VN Forum:
It may take me some time to unearth my source for this, but it is in print. Both
VN and Vera disliked the book from when Dmitri was still a child, and they were
paying attention to the literature he might soon be reading. This may have been
when the family first came to the United States, if not earlier.
They disapproved of the word used throughout the book to describe the slave Jim.
Clearly, their dislike of this vulgarity was consistent with their disgust with
prejudice and bigotry of all kinds. But it seems, or seemed, not to take into
account the fact that the action of Finn takes place in the slaveholding
American South of about 1835. I'll do my best to find the source.
Andrew
> ----------
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
> Reply To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> Sent: Monday, March 7, 2005 4:34 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Spam: Re: Fw: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
>
> Where does VN express this opinion of Huckleberry Finn?
>
> BB
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Donald B. Johnson
> Sent: Tuesday, 8 March 2005 6:26 a.m.
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Re: Fw: VN speaks for himself to on pets,peats and petards
>
>
>
> ----- Forwarded message from as-brown@comcast.net -----
> Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 19:21:53 -0500
> From: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
> Reply-To: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: Fw: VN speaks for himself to on pets,peats and petards
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
>
> Readers of Richard Ellmann's biography of Joyce, as well as readers of the
> now-hard-to-find letters Joyce sent Nora from Dublin in December of 1909 know
> that Bloom's predelictions and peccadillos are, basically, those of Joyce
> himself. With respect to the writer of the Lectures on Literature quoted
> below, I demure and suggest instead that in art, which Joyce and Nabokov both
> pursued, in fact, in the modernist tradition formulated by Wilde and others,
> taste and morals mean much less than whether a work is written well or badly.
> Nabokov was a man who could not find it in himself to accept a work like
> Huckleberry Finn because of what he considered its vulgarity. In this matter
my
> own views part company with VNs, in spite of my considering him the greatest
> American writer of the 20th century. When it comes to art (and much else,
> actually), you don't have to agree with anybody, not even your heroes, all of
> the time.
>
> Andrew
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: D. Barton Johnson
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 4:10 PM
> Subject: Fw: VN speaks for himself to on pets,peats and petards
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
> Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 11:45 AM
> Subject: VN speaks for himself to on pets,peats and petards
>
>
> Dear List,
>
> There is an important reference in VN´s lecture on Joyce which I couldn´t
find
> yesterday but that I can now add:
>
> I´m copying from Fredon Bowers edition of Lectures on Literature, page 287:
>
> "Another consideration in relation to Bloom: those so many who have written
so
> much about "Ulysses" are either very pure men or very depraved men. They are
> inclined to regard Bloom as a very ordinary nature, and apparently Joyce
> himself intended to portray an ordinary person. It is obvious, however, that
> in the sexual department Bloom is, if not on the verge of insanity, at least a
> good clinical example of extreme sexual preoccupation and perversity with all
> kinds of curious complications. His case is strictly heterosexual, of course -
> not homosexual as most of the ladies and gentlemen are in Proust (...) - but
> within the wide limits of Bloom´s love for the opposite sex he indulges in
acts>
> and dreams that are definitely subnormal in the zoological, evolutional sense.
> I shall not bore you with a list of his curious desires, but this I will say:
> in Bloom´s mind and in Joyce´s book the theme of sex is continually mixed and
> intertwined with the theme of the latrine. God knows I have no objection
> whatsoever to so-called frankness in novels. On the contrary, we have too
> little of it, and what there is has become in its turn conventional and trite,
> as used by so-called tough writers, the darlings of the book clubs, the pets
of
> clubwomen. But I do object to the folowing: Bloom is supposed to be a rather
> orginary citizen. Now it is not true that the mind of an ordinary citizen
> continuously dwells on physiological things. I object to the continuously,
not
> to the disgusting. All this very special pathological stuff seems artificial
> and unnecessary in this particular context".
> ..............................................
> There are other comments by VN about Joyce´s and Bloom´s
"extraordinariness"
> which are as vivid as the one here quoted.
> Young Eric´s or any Veen or Zemski (explicit) sexual fantasy should not be
> confused with VN´s own, to the point of " continuously" permeating his novel
> like a bass background.
>
> VN ( on page 346) writes about Joyce´s parodies :
> "We can thus define clichés as bits of dead prose and of rotting poetry.
> However the parody has its interruptions. Now what Joyce does here is to cause
> some of that dead and rotten stuff to reveal here and there its live source,
> its primary freshness (...) Joyce manages to build up something real - pathos,
> pity, compassion - out of the dead formulas which he parodies".
>
> I also think that this very real, compassionate and golden atmosphere is
> something VN achieved in ADA, albeit by other means no less "extraordinary".
> Paradise regained?
> Jansy
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
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