Dear Andrew,
I'm not sure that I got them all. But I did just finish
turning all the papers, the translation work, and the grades for the two world
literature class I was teaching, and so had time to go through it. I'm sure I
missed a few (I've posted the ones I could identify below).
Best,
Juan
Dear All,
Since I haven’t really seen it—I may have
missed it—and since it’s been on my mind, I really wanted to thank
the Listserv. This is a ridiculously bountiful resource, and proved invaluable
this semester when working on a paper on Nabokov and Borges.
I am particularly grateful to Abdellah’s gloss of Nabokov’s
“house without porticos” comment, and to the other contributors’
analysis of VN’s comments on Borges. Thank you. Whatever merits the
paper may have (and it does have some, but it does fall short of what I was
hoping for, and it’s ultimately flawed; I was looking for affinities in
the authors’ use of time to deal with history, and it all led to some
Kinbote/Menardian ruminations on Ada, “Tlon,”
and South America), they are due in large part to the online discussion—which,
while we’re at it and given that this precedes a plagiarism parody, let
me be clear: they were all duly credited, acknowledged, and cited.
Best,
Juan
* * *
A screeching comes across the sky. à Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow
Stately,
plump Fred Flintstone stood upon the ’saur’s head, bearing a
boulder of granite, on which a bird perched, its eyes crossed. An orange
dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild Mesozoic
air.
He
held his shell aloft and intoned:
Yabba
dabba doo! à James Joyce’s Ulysses
Afoot
and lighthearted, he took to the open road, healthy, free, the world before
him, the long brown path before him leading back to Bedrock. à Whitman’s “Songs
of the
Fred
repeating to himself, as he ran, the words of an old song:
Flintstones, meet the Flintstones.
Fred
Flintstone never made a lot of money. His name was never in the tablets. He was
not the finest cartoon character ever drawn. But he’s a Homo sapien. à Miller’s Death of a Salesman
They’re the modern Stone Age
family.
He
is simply a human being, more or less. à Bellow’s Herzog
From the town of Bedrock.
Stonecutter
for the world, toolmaker, stacker of meat, player with reptiles and the nation’s
cave dwellers, balmy, gritty, city of big boulders, Bedrock. à Sandburg’s “
They’re a page right out of
history.
It
was the best of times, it was the first of times, it was the age of ice, it was
the age of lava, it was the epoch of large sloping foreheads, it was the epoch
of dictabirds and monkey traffic signals and woolly-mammoth shower massages.
All the modern inconveniences. à Dickens’s Great Expectations & Twain’s Life on the
He
feels the wind on his ears, his heels hitting heavily on the gravel, but with
an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and
quicker and quieter, he runs. Ah: runs. Keep on truckin’. He outlives
this day and comes safe home. à Updike’s Rabbit Run & Shakespeare’s Henry V
See
Dino run. Run, Dino, run. à the Jack & Spot books
Let’s ride with the family down
the street.
Let
us go then, Hominidae, with the drive-in spread out against the sky, side of
piquant bronto ribs from the takeout. à Elliot’s “Song
of Pruffrock”
Through the courtesy of Fred’s two
feet.
What
makes Fred run? Wilma, light of his life, fire of his loincloth. His sin, his
soul. Wil-ma.
When you’re with the Flintstones.
“Oh,
Fred,” Wilma said, “we could have had such a damned good time
together.” à Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises
Have a yabba dabba doo time.
“Some
fun!” Barney said.
A dabba doo time.
“Shut
up, Barney,” Flintstone said.
You’ll have a gay old time.
Once again at midnight nearly, while Fred pondered weak
and weary over many a quaint and chiselled tablet of prehistoric lore, while he
nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of something gently
scratching, scratching at the cavern door. à Poe’s “The Raven.”
Someday maybe Fred will win the fight.
Nothing’s
more determined than a cat of sabre tooth—is there? Is there, baby? à Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
And that cat will stay out for the
night.
The
door was slammed by a thrust of a claw, and then at last all was still. The
house was locked, and he thought his stupid cook or the stupid maid must have
locked the place up until he remembered the maid was a mastodon and the cook a
wacky collection of labor-saurus devices. He pounded on the door, tried to
force it with his shoulder, he shouted: à Cheever’s “The
Swimmer”
Willllll-maaaa!
And
so he beat on, fists against the granite, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
à Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
-----Original Message-----
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of NABOKV-L
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 6:46 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] New Yorker Opal parody: "Wilma, light of his
life"
Great satire. The New Yorker really shines with that sort
of stuff, and
much
else. Especially the irreplaceable Henrik Hertzberg
(apologies for
probable
mispelling).
Were you able to identify all the allusions, Juan? I'm
afraid I only got
about half of them, if that.
Thanks for the light-hearted contribution.
Andrew Brown
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