EDNote: While tyrannically repressing Andrew Brown's enthusiastic (but
personal) reply to Jansy's Johnston/Johnson post, I had two relevant
thoughts. (I have not seen the movie yet, but it received strong
reviews). First: the name-switching reminds one of the
Humbert/Humberg/Homberg mutations that take place at the Enchanted
Hunters. I also thought of Charles Johnston, a post-VN translator of Eugene
Onegin. The entire cast list looks fishy (there is a "Dora";
Lolita's last name is "Miller"--not Schiller). I suspect that what
Andrew Brown calls the project's "vague but probably unintentional debt
to VN" is almost certainly intentional. But I would bet that the
Charles Johnston link is pure coincidence. A review at the following
site mentions VN's influence on the film. Curiously, Jarmusch doesn't
list Nabokov of one of his favorite authors (see list appended below).
-SB
Review
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/08.10.05/broken-0532.html
* * *
from: http://members.tripod.com/~jimjarmusch/recommended.html
In the Q&A section of Criterion's Down by Law DVD, Jarmusch was
asked to name some of his favorite books. He mentioned these:
"Tristram Shandy" by Laurence Sterne.
"Madame Bovary" and "Sentimental Education" by Gustave Flaubert.
Honoré de Balzac
Marcel Proust
"Orlando Furioso" by Ariosto.
"The Inferno" by Dante.
"Hamlet" by Shakeapeare.
William Blake.
"Illuminations" and "The Drunken Boat" by Rimbaud.
New York school of poets, such as Frank O'Hara, John Ahsbery, James
Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, David Shapiro, Ron Padgett and Frank Lima.
"Impressions of Africa" by Raymond Roussel.
Rilke.
Pablo Neruda.
Pierre Reverdy.
Stéphane Mallarmé.
Georges Bataille.
Blaise Cendrars.
"The Woman Chaser" by Charles Willeford.
"Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett.
"Serenade" by James M Cain.
"The Diaries of Adam and Eve" by Mark Twain.
"The Factory of Facts" and "Low Life" by Luc Sante.
"The Gangs of New York" by Herbert Ashbury.
"Coming through Slaughter" by Michael Ondaatje.
Samuel Beckett ("novels rather than plays").