Unfortunately, poshlost is NOT a made-up word… Wash Post authors
could use some googling …
From: Vladimir Nabokov
Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Sandy P. Klein
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 1:33 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov defined his made-up word
"poshlost" ...
Complete review at following URL:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/29/AR2008102903626.html
Too Much Bark,
Not Much Bite
By
Jeff VanderMeer,
who is a guest editor for
"Best American Fantasy 2"
Thursday, October 30, 2008; Page C02
THE SACRED BOOK OF THE WEREWOLF
By Victor Pelevin
Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
Viking. 335 pp. $25.95
Rough werewolf-on-werefox sex.
Were-creature philosophy that doubles as satirical
content.
Plucky underage Russian prostitutes who are actually
millennia-old supernatural beings.
Nonstop references to iconic authors, philosophers
and pop culture.
If you enjoy having all these elements in your
fiction, you'll love Victor Pelevin's "The Sacred Book of the
Werewolf." The rest of us, though, might come away from this novel feeling
bitten. There's something distinctly unholy going on here, something Vladimir
Nabokov might have labeled "poshlost," or "philistine
vulgarity," for all the times Pelevin tries to use the old butterfly
collector to prop up his own words, citing everything from "Lolita"
to "Ada."
[ ... ]
In an interview in the Paris Review, Nabokov defined his made-up word "poshlost" as,
among other things, "Corny trash, vulgar cliches . . . imitations of
imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudoliterature."
Pelevin is neither crude nor moronic, but his personal Rubicon is a seeming
inability to stop using others to shoulder the burden of writing his novel.
Thus the reader must endure Bulgakov sightings, silly doubled-up references
("I suddenly understood that Pushkin was killed by a homonimic shadow of
Dante"), and stultifying snippets of dialogue in question-answer form
about various movies. Many readers will realize they are bearing witness to an
odd kind of abdication of responsibility on the part of the author.
[ ... ]
Near the end of the novel, Alexander and A Hu-Li hole up in a bomb
shelter, in a scene that displays much-needed tenderness. A Hu-Li says to
Alexander, language is "the root from which infinite human stupidity
grows. And we were-creatures suffer from it too, because we're always
talking."
Ultimately "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf" fails
because Pelevin just can't shut up long enough to tell his story.
All
private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
co-editors.