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Fw: Nabokov and Lawrence Durrell
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----- Original Message -----
From: "redjames" <jwomack@yandex.ru>
To: <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 9:35 AM
Subject: Nabokov and Lawrence Durrell
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (40
lines) ------------------
> Hello,
>
> I am reading Lawrence Durrell's -The Avignon Quintet- (-Monsieur-,
> -Livia-, -Constance-, -Sebastian- and -Quinx-) at the moment
> (some form of penance, I suppose, because after -The Alexandria
> Quartet- [do we see a theme yet, kids?] nothing is really going to
> measure up). I thought I had better share these (so far) two points:
>
> 1. 'He closed his eyes the better to hear the tumultuous chatter of
> stars, or dining later at the Bavaria with her face occupying the
> centre of his mind, he engulfed the victorious jujubes of mandatory
> oysters. Ouf! What prose! Nabokov, a moi! In hotels their lives were
> wallpapered with sighs.' -Livia-
>
> 2. 'Soon sex as a subject would be ventilated completely. "Even the
> act is dying", he allowed Sutcliffe to note, "and will soon become
> as charmless as badminton. For a little while the cinema may conserve
> it as a token act - as involuntary as a sneeze or a hiccough: a token
> rape, while the indifferent victim gnaws an apple." -Livia-, and quite
> obviously picking up on -Lolita- 1, 13. I haven't yet seen the Kubrick
> film, which is the only one Durrell could be referring to (-Livia- was
> published in 1978), so don't know if the apple-rape makes it into the
> final cut there.
>
> The way in which Durrell (obsessed with sex, cyclical patterns in history,
> and any sort of grand explanatory theory, most noticeably Freud's and
> Marx's) uses Nabokov as a sort of shorthand for 'the end of the
> genito-urinary phase in [Europe's] literature' (his phrase, thankfully)
> seems obvious. Any other Nabokovian moments to enliven the remaining (oh
God)
> 894 pages ... I'll let you know. If, through my efforts, I have saved any
> single person from reading this monster, then I will feel my efforts to
> have been worthwhile.
>
> Best,
>
> James Womack.
> --
> Hogamus, Higamus: Man is Polygamous
> Higamus, Hogamus: Woman Monogamous
>
>
From: "redjames" <jwomack@yandex.ru>
To: <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 9:35 AM
Subject: Nabokov and Lawrence Durrell
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (40
lines) ------------------
> Hello,
>
> I am reading Lawrence Durrell's -The Avignon Quintet- (-Monsieur-,
> -Livia-, -Constance-, -Sebastian- and -Quinx-) at the moment
> (some form of penance, I suppose, because after -The Alexandria
> Quartet- [do we see a theme yet, kids?] nothing is really going to
> measure up). I thought I had better share these (so far) two points:
>
> 1. 'He closed his eyes the better to hear the tumultuous chatter of
> stars, or dining later at the Bavaria with her face occupying the
> centre of his mind, he engulfed the victorious jujubes of mandatory
> oysters. Ouf! What prose! Nabokov, a moi! In hotels their lives were
> wallpapered with sighs.' -Livia-
>
> 2. 'Soon sex as a subject would be ventilated completely. "Even the
> act is dying", he allowed Sutcliffe to note, "and will soon become
> as charmless as badminton. For a little while the cinema may conserve
> it as a token act - as involuntary as a sneeze or a hiccough: a token
> rape, while the indifferent victim gnaws an apple." -Livia-, and quite
> obviously picking up on -Lolita- 1, 13. I haven't yet seen the Kubrick
> film, which is the only one Durrell could be referring to (-Livia- was
> published in 1978), so don't know if the apple-rape makes it into the
> final cut there.
>
> The way in which Durrell (obsessed with sex, cyclical patterns in history,
> and any sort of grand explanatory theory, most noticeably Freud's and
> Marx's) uses Nabokov as a sort of shorthand for 'the end of the
> genito-urinary phase in [Europe's] literature' (his phrase, thankfully)
> seems obvious. Any other Nabokovian moments to enliven the remaining (oh
God)
> 894 pages ... I'll let you know. If, through my efforts, I have saved any
> single person from reading this monster, then I will feel my efforts to
> have been worthwhile.
>
> Best,
>
> James Womack.
> --
> Hogamus, Higamus: Man is Polygamous
> Higamus, Hogamus: Woman Monogamous
>
>