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Re: What does VN rail against? (fwd)
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From: Mary Bellino <iambe@javanet.com>
From Mary Bellino (iambe@javanet.com):
Mr. Bolt asks whether this list isn't a kind of book club. He has a
point, except that members of book clubs (almost by definition) do not
read poems like "Dark Ice." This whole thread puts me in mind of E. B.
White's great parody "A Classic Waits for Me." I wonder if Galya would
consider running these excerpts from it, especially since the Nabokovs
and the Whites were friends, and VN also found Hendrik Willem Van Loon
pretty funny (he appears in Pnin, I think):
A Classic Waits for Me
A classic waits for me, it contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking if taste were lacking, or if the endorsement of the
right man were lacking.
O clublife, and the pleasures of membership...
Into an armchair endlessly rocking,
Walter J. Black, my president,
I, freely invited, cordially welcomed to membership,
My arm around John Kiernan, Pearl S. Buck,
My taste in books guarded by the spirits of William Lyon Phelps, Hendrik
Van Willem Loon...
I, connoisseur of good reading, friend of connoisseurs of good reading
everywhere,
I, not obligated to take any specific number of books, free to reject
any volume, perfectly free to reject Montaigne, Erasmus, Milton...
Come, I will make the club indissoluble...
I strike up for an Old Book.
Long the best-read figure in America, my dues paid, sitter in armchairs
everywhere, wanderer in populous cities, weeping with Hecuba and with
the late Willima Lyon Phelps,
Free to cancel my membership whenever I wish...
And I will not read a book nor the least part of a book but has the
approval of the Committee...
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of
on the same terms (89 cents for the Regular Edition or $1.39 for the
DeLuxe Edition, plus a few cents postage)....
Mary Bellino
From Mary Bellino (iambe@javanet.com):
Mr. Bolt asks whether this list isn't a kind of book club. He has a
point, except that members of book clubs (almost by definition) do not
read poems like "Dark Ice." This whole thread puts me in mind of E. B.
White's great parody "A Classic Waits for Me." I wonder if Galya would
consider running these excerpts from it, especially since the Nabokovs
and the Whites were friends, and VN also found Hendrik Willem Van Loon
pretty funny (he appears in Pnin, I think):
A Classic Waits for Me
A classic waits for me, it contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking if taste were lacking, or if the endorsement of the
right man were lacking.
O clublife, and the pleasures of membership...
Into an armchair endlessly rocking,
Walter J. Black, my president,
I, freely invited, cordially welcomed to membership,
My arm around John Kiernan, Pearl S. Buck,
My taste in books guarded by the spirits of William Lyon Phelps, Hendrik
Van Willem Loon...
I, connoisseur of good reading, friend of connoisseurs of good reading
everywhere,
I, not obligated to take any specific number of books, free to reject
any volume, perfectly free to reject Montaigne, Erasmus, Milton...
Come, I will make the club indissoluble...
I strike up for an Old Book.
Long the best-read figure in America, my dues paid, sitter in armchairs
everywhere, wanderer in populous cities, weeping with Hecuba and with
the late Willima Lyon Phelps,
Free to cancel my membership whenever I wish...
And I will not read a book nor the least part of a book but has the
approval of the Committee...
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of
on the same terms (89 cents for the Regular Edition or $1.39 for the
DeLuxe Edition, plus a few cents postage)....
Mary Bellino