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Re: Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
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Mary H. Efremov [ on Sandy Klein's link to http://robertmaclean.blogspot.com/2012/02/vladimir-nabokov-and-twelve-year-old.html
The Devil's Pleasure Garden]: "The somewhat dersive tone of this essay suggests a superior knowledge of writing, literature and Nabokov. Linking UNDER THE VOLCANO with A LA RECHERCHE and LOLITA seems like a case of very eclectic literary judgment. Dead wrong in my opinion."
JM: I had taken the trouble to copy down a few sentences from Robert Maclean's blogspot to comment upon them later but, in the end, I decided to quit my self-imposed task, since I'd never be able to do him justice. Now that Mary H. Efremov brought him up, I decided to copy the excerpts to post.
They speak for themselves and, I'm sure, they'll confirm her extremely polite observations concerting the essayist's "derisive tone", his assumed "superior knowlege" and his "very ecletic literary judgement."
Excerpts:
"If it weren't for Lolita we might never have heard of Nabokov, which would be a huge loss. Success is so often a matter of scandal."[ ..]."I cannot but acknowledge that the five great novels of the twentieth century are Ulysses, A la recherche, Gatsby, Under the Volcano and Lolita."[...]"What gives Lolita that extra thing is the confrontation between a cultured European and the American vulgarity embodied by Lolita, with whom he is desperately in love. Then too, one cannot but feel that it's a portrait of Nabokov's own passion. And passion delivers. It's shameless of me to say this-I know nothing of this man's inner life-but lust for young girls does emerge elsewhere in his work, and in Lolita he contributed the word "nymphet" to the English language. It's my intuition that his stuffed-shirtism, so at home after all in the 1950s, is a firewall against an unseemly urge. In one of his essays he opines that if the criminal could only write about the crime he wouldn't have to commit it. Like Dostoyevsky, Lewis Carroll and J. D. Salinger he converted the obsession into literature. Balthus did it in paint"[...]"And English literature-we must have the courage to face it-is dead."
Sandy Pallot Klein sends: http://www.miscellanynews.com/2.1579/russell-pioneers-queer-theory-in-literature-at-vassar-1.2697147#.TzNIg1E78rw
"Russell pioneers queer theory in literature at Vassar, by Emma Daniels"
Excerpts: Professor of English Paul Russell investigates the rich story of Sergey Nabokov, brother of writer Vladimir Nabokov, in his latest book The Unreal
Life of Sergey Nabokov: A Nove Famed Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote, "For various reasons, I find it inordinately hard to speak
about my other brother." Professor of English Paul Russell decided to investigate the rich story behind Nabokov's words ...Nabokov barely mentions Sergey in
his autobiography, and in 1915 publicly outed Sergey's homosexuality..."
JM: Vladimir Nabokov also "barely mentions" his other brother, Cyril, or his sisters. Although they're all present in his memoirs, I often get the curious feeling that he was an only child, perhaps because of the magic manner by which he's appropriated his childhood-years in Russia.
I remember reading a foreword (or an interview) in which Vladimir Nabokov describes how he once read his manuscript to his family and how they responded to it. It's worth looking into since it seems that Nabokov's subjectivity shines in contrast to the factuality of an autobiographical report. . .
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The Devil's Pleasure Garden]: "The somewhat dersive tone of this essay suggests a superior knowledge of writing, literature and Nabokov. Linking UNDER THE VOLCANO with A LA RECHERCHE and LOLITA seems like a case of very eclectic literary judgment. Dead wrong in my opinion."
JM: I had taken the trouble to copy down a few sentences from Robert Maclean's blogspot to comment upon them later but, in the end, I decided to quit my self-imposed task, since I'd never be able to do him justice. Now that Mary H. Efremov brought him up, I decided to copy the excerpts to post.
They speak for themselves and, I'm sure, they'll confirm her extremely polite observations concerting the essayist's "derisive tone", his assumed "superior knowlege" and his "very ecletic literary judgement."
Excerpts:
"If it weren't for Lolita we might never have heard of Nabokov, which would be a huge loss. Success is so often a matter of scandal."[ ..]."I cannot but acknowledge that the five great novels of the twentieth century are Ulysses, A la recherche, Gatsby, Under the Volcano and Lolita."[...]"What gives Lolita that extra thing is the confrontation between a cultured European and the American vulgarity embodied by Lolita, with whom he is desperately in love. Then too, one cannot but feel that it's a portrait of Nabokov's own passion. And passion delivers. It's shameless of me to say this-I know nothing of this man's inner life-but lust for young girls does emerge elsewhere in his work, and in Lolita he contributed the word "nymphet" to the English language. It's my intuition that his stuffed-shirtism, so at home after all in the 1950s, is a firewall against an unseemly urge. In one of his essays he opines that if the criminal could only write about the crime he wouldn't have to commit it. Like Dostoyevsky, Lewis Carroll and J. D. Salinger he converted the obsession into literature. Balthus did it in paint"[...]"And English literature-we must have the courage to face it-is dead."
Sandy Pallot Klein sends: http://www.miscellanynews.com/2.1579/russell-pioneers-queer-theory-in-literature-at-vassar-1.2697147#.TzNIg1E78rw
"Russell pioneers queer theory in literature at Vassar, by Emma Daniels"
Excerpts: Professor of English Paul Russell investigates the rich story of Sergey Nabokov, brother of writer Vladimir Nabokov, in his latest book The Unreal
Life of Sergey Nabokov: A Nove Famed Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote, "For various reasons, I find it inordinately hard to speak
about my other brother." Professor of English Paul Russell decided to investigate the rich story behind Nabokov's words ...Nabokov barely mentions Sergey in
his autobiography, and in 1915 publicly outed Sergey's homosexuality..."
JM: Vladimir Nabokov also "barely mentions" his other brother, Cyril, or his sisters. Although they're all present in his memoirs, I often get the curious feeling that he was an only child, perhaps because of the magic manner by which he's appropriated his childhood-years in Russia.
I remember reading a foreword (or an interview) in which Vladimir Nabokov describes how he once read his manuscript to his family and how they responded to it. It's worth looking into since it seems that Nabokov's subjectivity shines in contrast to the factuality of an autobiographical report. . .
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/