Subject
VNCollation: Feb96
Date
Body
EDITOR'S NOTE. NABOKOV-L thanks Suellen Stringer-Hye
<stringers@library.vanderbilt.edu> for another installment of her survey
of Nabokov-related material in the media. Ms. Stringer-Hye and I would
both like to thank Marianne Cotugno for her on-going contribution to the
series. DBJ
---------------------------
Most of the recent articles written about Nabokov concern either
_The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov _ or Adrian Lyne's upcoming film
version of _Lolita_. Additionally, Nabokov is mentioned or employed
in several unrelated books, the citations to which are indicated
below. I have thrown in a few oddities for flavor but have
"winnowed" (to use a current favorite) the many many articles in
which the use of Nabokov's name appears to me insignificant.
For the record, here is the _Washington Post_, December 31, list
of Best Sellers. Without researching the post-New Year rise and fall
of the book's fortunes, one can be sure only that _The Stories of
Vladimir Nabokov_ made the Top 10 on December 31 of 1995.
HARDCOVER FICTION
1. The Lost World, by Michael Crichton.
2. Five Days in Paris, by Danielle Steel.
3. Hide and Seek, by James Patterson.
4. The Christmas Box, by Richard Paul Evans.
5. Silent Night, by Mary Higgins Clark.
6. The Horse Whisperer, by Nicholas Evans.
7. Shock Wave, by Clive Cussler.
8. Mr. Ives' Christmas, by Oscar Hijuelos.
9. The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco.
10. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, edited by Dmitri Nabokov.
Needless to say, the book was reviewed extensively. From a cross-
section of American newspapers, here is a collection of the
opening paragraphs to these reviews, demonstrating the timbre
and/or tone of the national response.
The Washington Times. January 7, 1996, Sunday, Final Edition
Bruce Allen writes:
The late Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) has been praised
frequently as one of the most sophisticated craftsmen among
all great modern writers - and reviled almost as often as a
frigid aesthete whose self-congratulatory concoctions bear no
relationship to real life and offer little to interest that
possibly mythical creature, the general reader.
------------------------
The Columbus Dispatch. December 24, 1995
Sixty-five stories, mainly from the Russian
master's European period between the world wars. ''Shows
Nabokov as a genius in the making.''(George Meyers., Jr.)
-----------------------------
The Times-Picayune. December 24, 1995
Melanie McKay writes:
Imagine a handsome display case, where rare specimens of
vivid butterflies and velvety moths lie, perfect and serene
between softly layered cotton and bright, clear glass.
Each is unique, though the markings, shapes and brilliant
colors show a family resemblance here, a deliberate mimicry
there. You linger over each specimen, marveling at the
subtle patterns and delicate coloration. Then, enchanted,
you step back to take it all in and find the whole even more
dazzling than its parts.
So it is with the "Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, "...
-------------------------------
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis). December 24, 1995
Frederick Koeppel comments:
And as good as these books were, they and every other book I
read this year are put to shame by _The Stories of Vladimir
Nabokov_. Among the wonders that will never cease is the wonder that Nabokov never won
the Nobel Prize for Literature while relative pipsqueaks
walked away with the honor. Well, never mind; we have his
novels, including the unclouded brilliance of Lolita, which
I reread this year; his memorial monument of clarity,
Speak, Memory; and this new compilation, which gathers not
only all the stories published in book form during his lifetime
but a number of early works never seen outside expatriate
magazines in the 1920s. Few writers besides Nabokov bring
such inventive, almost perversely insightful sharpness and
quickness to the physical and psychological kingdom. Readers
feel, even comprehend, snow on a road, a bracelet on a lamp-
lit wrist, a phrase of opera sung in a dingy courtyard. The
book ferments with the glory (dubious though it might
be) and mortality of all objects and endeavors in the world.
True, Nabokov sometimes manipulates his characters and
situations, and his occasional insouciant glee at their
failures can be distasteful. Yet he is clearly one of the
supreme masters of 20th Century literature, and the
myriad esthetic and emotional thrills he presents on
almost every page of this nearly 650-page volume must be an
essential part of our lives.
----------------------------------------
Austin American-Statesman. December 24, 1995
Don McLeese:
The literary reputation of Vladimir Nabokov rests mainly
with his novels: the one that saddled him with popular
notoriety as a writer of dirty books (a notoriety soon to be
renewed with another film adaption of ''Lolita,'' directed by
noted panderer Adrian Lyne), the others (''Ada,'' ''Pale
Fire'') with which graduate students continue to grapple.
Though the Russian emigre and American professor abandoned the
short form in the '50s to concentrate on longer works, this
monumental collection confirms that he would rank with the
masters of modern fiction even if he had written nothing
but these stories.
----------------------------
Reviewed as well in the January 6, 1996 "Irish
Times" , _The Real Life of Sebastian Knight_:
This was Nabokov's first novel in English, published in
1941, and might be defined as a character (the narrator) in
charge of an author, his dead half brother who had been a
novelist. Though short, it is intricate and slightly
surreal, even deliberately mystifying, the kind of double or
multiple identity story whose ancestry probably lies in Kafka
and Pirandello. While the book is scarcely a masterpiece, it
is witty, characteristically odd, and stylishly cynical,
in a way which looks forward to the Absurdist writers of the
postwar era.
*********************************************************************
Caroloco, the production company who originally bought the
rights and hired Adrian Lyne to make the film version of _Lolita_ is
now no longer in business. Its co-founder, however, Mario Kassar
will continue as the executive producer of " Lolita" even though
Caroloco no longer owns the film. Founded in 1976, Carolco, is
described in newspapers as a "major force" among independent
production companies, introducing, for better or worse, John Rambo
to American popular culture. Kassar served as the executive producer
for the "Rambo"films as well as Terminator 2: Judgment Day,'' Basic Instinct,''
and Total Recall.
From the press release about Kassar's relocation to Paramount :
In 1989, Kassar became the sole chairman of Carolco. He
subsequently executive produced such films as Rambling Rose,''
The Doors'' and L.A. Story.'' With Sir Richard Attenborough,
Kassar also produced Chaplin." More recently served as
executive producer of the science- fiction hit "Stargate,"
which was named 1994's Best Science Fiction Movie by the
Academy of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy; Paul
Verhoeven's "Showgirls"; and "Cutthroat Island."
****************************************************************************
BOOKS
Davis, Natalie Zemon, _Women on the Margins : Three
Seventeenth-Century Lives_ (Cambridge, Mass. :
Harvard University Press) 1995.
One of the three lives is that of Maria Sybilla Merian, 1647-1717.
A German painter and naturalist,she produced an innovative
work on tropical insects based on lore gathered from the Carib,
Arawak, and African women of Suriname. Nabokov, according to Davis,
came upon her butterfly books in an attic when he was a small boy.
------------------------------
In 1992, cartoon artist Art Spiegelman (Maus) and poet Bob Callahan
initiated a series of graphic novels or pop art "picture paperbacks"
called Neon Lit. The January 3, 1994 _Detroit News_ reports:
The Neon Lit motto: "Where, in crime's shadow, art and
literature meet." The series takes modern or postmodern crime
fiction and, drawing on the talents of comics writers and
illustrators, adapts it to a black and white graphic format
(the mood's inspired, say the blurbs, by hard-boiled crime
stories and classic film noir). Last year Neon Lit adapted
Auster's metaphysical mystery City of Glass. This year's entry
is Barry Gifford's Perdita Durango (adapted by Bob Callahan,
art by Scott Gillis, Avon, $ 12.50) -- a tale of the
Texas-to-Los-Angeles adventures of a dangerous
demimondaine. Scheduled for future Neon Lit editions: Doris
Lessing's The Fifth Child, Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in
the Dark and William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley.
Fascinating stuff for both lovers of art and fiction.
********************************************************************************
SIX HOURS OF REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
Harold Pinter's dramatisation of Marcel Proust's _Remembrance
Of Things Past_ was one of the features included in Radio 3's
six hour piece "Remembering and Forgetting:" A themed evening
of music, discussion, readings and drama exploring the whys and
wherefores of Memory. The January 6, _Guardian_ notes
Christopher Hope's contribution:
Considerably more rewarding was Christopher Hope's" Now
Remember", an incisive essay, both witty and melancholy, that
linked his own experiences of life as an exile with those of
the writer Vladimir Nabokov. "For some of us, remembering may
be a form of revenge, a way of getting our own back, making
good the unacceptable loss of something precious, like a
childhood or a country or of someone," suggested Hope.
Nabokov's memoir Speak Memory, he argued, "is a kind of
guerrilla manual for those who relish his strategies of
retrospective attacks."
**********************************************************************
"WHITHER MIRTH?"
A recent issue of the _Paris Review _ , devoted to the subject of
"humor" , includes an essay by Melvin Jules Bukiet entitled "Squeak
Memory". From the Washington Post review:
Bukiet's affectionate, slyly humorous story describes a
down-at-heels young man who secretly follows Vladimir Nabokov
to a second-rate New York hotel. I won't say what happens, but
it's fun just to pick out phrases like "the sinister bend of
his path" and "as warily as if I had been invited to a
beheading."
**************************************************************************
Also of Nabokovian note is a new novel called _The End of Alice_
by A.M. Homes (Scribner). As reviewed by Michiko Kakutani in the New York
Times of Feb. 23, 1996 (B15), Ms. Holmes novel is "a kind of updated
_Lolita_, borrowing from Nabokov superficial motifs. images and narrative
strategies. The novel she has writtern, however, has nothing else in
common with _Lolita_ and evertthing in common with Nabokov's definition of
pornography, namely, a lubricious and single-minded pursuit of
sensationalism and sensation."
In a publisher's statement Ms. Homes makes several references to
_Lolita_ "repeatedly referring to Nabokov's Humbert Humbert as 'Humpert'."
*************************************************************************
And in ye olde category of "last but not least", in the style of
"Jeopardy", drawn from the Washington Post book section the,
Answer to Book Bag #867 (Dec. 17, 1995) : The famous hotels
are: (1) Montreux-Palace Hotel (where Nabokov stayed during
his later years, in Switzerland), (2) Plaza Hotel (where Scott
and Zelda Fitzgerald frolicked in the fountain outside this New
York hotel); (3) Cadogan Hotel (where Oscar Wilde was arrested
in London), and (4) Chelsea Hotel (in New York where composer
Virgil Thomson lived).
Suellen Stringer-Hye
Special Collections
Jean and Alexander Heard Library
Vanderbilt University
stringers@library.vanderbilt.edu
<stringers@library.vanderbilt.edu> for another installment of her survey
of Nabokov-related material in the media. Ms. Stringer-Hye and I would
both like to thank Marianne Cotugno for her on-going contribution to the
series. DBJ
---------------------------
Most of the recent articles written about Nabokov concern either
_The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov _ or Adrian Lyne's upcoming film
version of _Lolita_. Additionally, Nabokov is mentioned or employed
in several unrelated books, the citations to which are indicated
below. I have thrown in a few oddities for flavor but have
"winnowed" (to use a current favorite) the many many articles in
which the use of Nabokov's name appears to me insignificant.
For the record, here is the _Washington Post_, December 31, list
of Best Sellers. Without researching the post-New Year rise and fall
of the book's fortunes, one can be sure only that _The Stories of
Vladimir Nabokov_ made the Top 10 on December 31 of 1995.
HARDCOVER FICTION
1. The Lost World, by Michael Crichton.
2. Five Days in Paris, by Danielle Steel.
3. Hide and Seek, by James Patterson.
4. The Christmas Box, by Richard Paul Evans.
5. Silent Night, by Mary Higgins Clark.
6. The Horse Whisperer, by Nicholas Evans.
7. Shock Wave, by Clive Cussler.
8. Mr. Ives' Christmas, by Oscar Hijuelos.
9. The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco.
10. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, edited by Dmitri Nabokov.
Needless to say, the book was reviewed extensively. From a cross-
section of American newspapers, here is a collection of the
opening paragraphs to these reviews, demonstrating the timbre
and/or tone of the national response.
The Washington Times. January 7, 1996, Sunday, Final Edition
Bruce Allen writes:
The late Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) has been praised
frequently as one of the most sophisticated craftsmen among
all great modern writers - and reviled almost as often as a
frigid aesthete whose self-congratulatory concoctions bear no
relationship to real life and offer little to interest that
possibly mythical creature, the general reader.
------------------------
The Columbus Dispatch. December 24, 1995
Sixty-five stories, mainly from the Russian
master's European period between the world wars. ''Shows
Nabokov as a genius in the making.''(George Meyers., Jr.)
-----------------------------
The Times-Picayune. December 24, 1995
Melanie McKay writes:
Imagine a handsome display case, where rare specimens of
vivid butterflies and velvety moths lie, perfect and serene
between softly layered cotton and bright, clear glass.
Each is unique, though the markings, shapes and brilliant
colors show a family resemblance here, a deliberate mimicry
there. You linger over each specimen, marveling at the
subtle patterns and delicate coloration. Then, enchanted,
you step back to take it all in and find the whole even more
dazzling than its parts.
So it is with the "Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, "...
-------------------------------
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis). December 24, 1995
Frederick Koeppel comments:
And as good as these books were, they and every other book I
read this year are put to shame by _The Stories of Vladimir
Nabokov_. Among the wonders that will never cease is the wonder that Nabokov never won
the Nobel Prize for Literature while relative pipsqueaks
walked away with the honor. Well, never mind; we have his
novels, including the unclouded brilliance of Lolita, which
I reread this year; his memorial monument of clarity,
Speak, Memory; and this new compilation, which gathers not
only all the stories published in book form during his lifetime
but a number of early works never seen outside expatriate
magazines in the 1920s. Few writers besides Nabokov bring
such inventive, almost perversely insightful sharpness and
quickness to the physical and psychological kingdom. Readers
feel, even comprehend, snow on a road, a bracelet on a lamp-
lit wrist, a phrase of opera sung in a dingy courtyard. The
book ferments with the glory (dubious though it might
be) and mortality of all objects and endeavors in the world.
True, Nabokov sometimes manipulates his characters and
situations, and his occasional insouciant glee at their
failures can be distasteful. Yet he is clearly one of the
supreme masters of 20th Century literature, and the
myriad esthetic and emotional thrills he presents on
almost every page of this nearly 650-page volume must be an
essential part of our lives.
----------------------------------------
Austin American-Statesman. December 24, 1995
Don McLeese:
The literary reputation of Vladimir Nabokov rests mainly
with his novels: the one that saddled him with popular
notoriety as a writer of dirty books (a notoriety soon to be
renewed with another film adaption of ''Lolita,'' directed by
noted panderer Adrian Lyne), the others (''Ada,'' ''Pale
Fire'') with which graduate students continue to grapple.
Though the Russian emigre and American professor abandoned the
short form in the '50s to concentrate on longer works, this
monumental collection confirms that he would rank with the
masters of modern fiction even if he had written nothing
but these stories.
----------------------------
Reviewed as well in the January 6, 1996 "Irish
Times" , _The Real Life of Sebastian Knight_:
This was Nabokov's first novel in English, published in
1941, and might be defined as a character (the narrator) in
charge of an author, his dead half brother who had been a
novelist. Though short, it is intricate and slightly
surreal, even deliberately mystifying, the kind of double or
multiple identity story whose ancestry probably lies in Kafka
and Pirandello. While the book is scarcely a masterpiece, it
is witty, characteristically odd, and stylishly cynical,
in a way which looks forward to the Absurdist writers of the
postwar era.
*********************************************************************
Caroloco, the production company who originally bought the
rights and hired Adrian Lyne to make the film version of _Lolita_ is
now no longer in business. Its co-founder, however, Mario Kassar
will continue as the executive producer of " Lolita" even though
Caroloco no longer owns the film. Founded in 1976, Carolco, is
described in newspapers as a "major force" among independent
production companies, introducing, for better or worse, John Rambo
to American popular culture. Kassar served as the executive producer
for the "Rambo"films as well as Terminator 2: Judgment Day,'' Basic Instinct,''
and Total Recall.
From the press release about Kassar's relocation to Paramount :
In 1989, Kassar became the sole chairman of Carolco. He
subsequently executive produced such films as Rambling Rose,''
The Doors'' and L.A. Story.'' With Sir Richard Attenborough,
Kassar also produced Chaplin." More recently served as
executive producer of the science- fiction hit "Stargate,"
which was named 1994's Best Science Fiction Movie by the
Academy of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy; Paul
Verhoeven's "Showgirls"; and "Cutthroat Island."
****************************************************************************
BOOKS
Davis, Natalie Zemon, _Women on the Margins : Three
Seventeenth-Century Lives_ (Cambridge, Mass. :
Harvard University Press) 1995.
One of the three lives is that of Maria Sybilla Merian, 1647-1717.
A German painter and naturalist,she produced an innovative
work on tropical insects based on lore gathered from the Carib,
Arawak, and African women of Suriname. Nabokov, according to Davis,
came upon her butterfly books in an attic when he was a small boy.
------------------------------
In 1992, cartoon artist Art Spiegelman (Maus) and poet Bob Callahan
initiated a series of graphic novels or pop art "picture paperbacks"
called Neon Lit. The January 3, 1994 _Detroit News_ reports:
The Neon Lit motto: "Where, in crime's shadow, art and
literature meet." The series takes modern or postmodern crime
fiction and, drawing on the talents of comics writers and
illustrators, adapts it to a black and white graphic format
(the mood's inspired, say the blurbs, by hard-boiled crime
stories and classic film noir). Last year Neon Lit adapted
Auster's metaphysical mystery City of Glass. This year's entry
is Barry Gifford's Perdita Durango (adapted by Bob Callahan,
art by Scott Gillis, Avon, $ 12.50) -- a tale of the
Texas-to-Los-Angeles adventures of a dangerous
demimondaine. Scheduled for future Neon Lit editions: Doris
Lessing's The Fifth Child, Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in
the Dark and William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley.
Fascinating stuff for both lovers of art and fiction.
********************************************************************************
SIX HOURS OF REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
Harold Pinter's dramatisation of Marcel Proust's _Remembrance
Of Things Past_ was one of the features included in Radio 3's
six hour piece "Remembering and Forgetting:" A themed evening
of music, discussion, readings and drama exploring the whys and
wherefores of Memory. The January 6, _Guardian_ notes
Christopher Hope's contribution:
Considerably more rewarding was Christopher Hope's" Now
Remember", an incisive essay, both witty and melancholy, that
linked his own experiences of life as an exile with those of
the writer Vladimir Nabokov. "For some of us, remembering may
be a form of revenge, a way of getting our own back, making
good the unacceptable loss of something precious, like a
childhood or a country or of someone," suggested Hope.
Nabokov's memoir Speak Memory, he argued, "is a kind of
guerrilla manual for those who relish his strategies of
retrospective attacks."
**********************************************************************
"WHITHER MIRTH?"
A recent issue of the _Paris Review _ , devoted to the subject of
"humor" , includes an essay by Melvin Jules Bukiet entitled "Squeak
Memory". From the Washington Post review:
Bukiet's affectionate, slyly humorous story describes a
down-at-heels young man who secretly follows Vladimir Nabokov
to a second-rate New York hotel. I won't say what happens, but
it's fun just to pick out phrases like "the sinister bend of
his path" and "as warily as if I had been invited to a
beheading."
**************************************************************************
Also of Nabokovian note is a new novel called _The End of Alice_
by A.M. Homes (Scribner). As reviewed by Michiko Kakutani in the New York
Times of Feb. 23, 1996 (B15), Ms. Holmes novel is "a kind of updated
_Lolita_, borrowing from Nabokov superficial motifs. images and narrative
strategies. The novel she has writtern, however, has nothing else in
common with _Lolita_ and evertthing in common with Nabokov's definition of
pornography, namely, a lubricious and single-minded pursuit of
sensationalism and sensation."
In a publisher's statement Ms. Homes makes several references to
_Lolita_ "repeatedly referring to Nabokov's Humbert Humbert as 'Humpert'."
*************************************************************************
And in ye olde category of "last but not least", in the style of
"Jeopardy", drawn from the Washington Post book section the,
Answer to Book Bag #867 (Dec. 17, 1995) : The famous hotels
are: (1) Montreux-Palace Hotel (where Nabokov stayed during
his later years, in Switzerland), (2) Plaza Hotel (where Scott
and Zelda Fitzgerald frolicked in the fountain outside this New
York hotel); (3) Cadogan Hotel (where Oscar Wilde was arrested
in London), and (4) Chelsea Hotel (in New York where composer
Virgil Thomson lived).
Suellen Stringer-Hye
Special Collections
Jean and Alexander Heard Library
Vanderbilt University
stringers@library.vanderbilt.edu