Subject
Re: query - VN & Lacan (fwd)
Date
Body
I've read Blum's book--*Hide and Seek: The Child Between Psychoanalysis
and Fiction* (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1995), but have only glum things to
report on that front, particularly where *Lolita* is concerned. A sample
of my endnotes (to a chapter in my current book in progress) reveals the
following--and I quote myself quoting Glum--oops, I mean Blum:
Like a patient stretched out on the analyst's couch, each
male-authored novel [Blum examines] betrays, in her
words, "a patriarchal fantasy devised in the service of solidifying and
perpetuating a gender system in which the woman is marked as lacking the
very thing she has most clearly--the child" (9). Seeking to unearth from
their narratives what "the texts illustrate against their will," Blum
rarely bothers to distinguish between the novelist and his characters--a
particularly dangerous habit in *Lolita*'s case, in which she tends to
conflate the author with his narrator. To Blum, the intricacies of
Nabokov's narrative reveal nothing more than the text's own "pathological"
narcissism: "The text's one-way desire for the reader tries to foreclose
reciprocity--even though the text loathes precisely its dependence" (204).
Enough, I think you catch the drift.
Ellen Pifer
University of Delaware
On Sun, 30 Mar 1997, Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
> From: JOHN BURT FOSTER <jfoster@osf1.gmu.edu>
>
>
> Regarding the question concerning work on Nabokov and Lacan, I chaired an
> MLA session several years ago in which Virginia Blum (Univ. of Kentucky)
> gave a paper on Lacan and LOLITA. My impression is that it was a chapter
> from a book in progress, and that the book (which focused on
> psychological issues in several different authors) has now been published.
> It should be easy to find, and I regret not having my files readily
> accessible at the moment, so that I could give better information.
>
> John Foster
> English / George Mason University
> Email Address: "jfoster@gmu.edu"
>
and Fiction* (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1995), but have only glum things to
report on that front, particularly where *Lolita* is concerned. A sample
of my endnotes (to a chapter in my current book in progress) reveals the
following--and I quote myself quoting Glum--oops, I mean Blum:
Like a patient stretched out on the analyst's couch, each
male-authored novel [Blum examines] betrays, in her
words, "a patriarchal fantasy devised in the service of solidifying and
perpetuating a gender system in which the woman is marked as lacking the
very thing she has most clearly--the child" (9). Seeking to unearth from
their narratives what "the texts illustrate against their will," Blum
rarely bothers to distinguish between the novelist and his characters--a
particularly dangerous habit in *Lolita*'s case, in which she tends to
conflate the author with his narrator. To Blum, the intricacies of
Nabokov's narrative reveal nothing more than the text's own "pathological"
narcissism: "The text's one-way desire for the reader tries to foreclose
reciprocity--even though the text loathes precisely its dependence" (204).
Enough, I think you catch the drift.
Ellen Pifer
University of Delaware
On Sun, 30 Mar 1997, Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
> From: JOHN BURT FOSTER <jfoster@osf1.gmu.edu>
>
>
> Regarding the question concerning work on Nabokov and Lacan, I chaired an
> MLA session several years ago in which Virginia Blum (Univ. of Kentucky)
> gave a paper on Lacan and LOLITA. My impression is that it was a chapter
> from a book in progress, and that the book (which focused on
> psychological issues in several different authors) has now been published.
> It should be easy to find, and I regret not having my files readily
> accessible at the moment, so that I could give better information.
>
> John Foster
> English / George Mason University
> Email Address: "jfoster@gmu.edu"
>