Stan K-Bootle [to Sergei] "idioms
being the source of much humour, one might say that, unlike Jesus, when St Peter
ventured out of his boat onto Lake Galilee, he was “skating on thin
ice.” [on Alfina's comment about Zemblanese] "my only objection to
this review of “Zemblan Grammar” is the derogatory tone of “mostly a mash-up of
Russian, Germanic/Scandinavian, and Anglo Saxon.” [...and ...]to remind you not
to confuse “lexis” with “grammar.”[...]VN (ubiquitous as Jansy notes) gets
mentioned in last Saturday’s Times2 review by Leo Robson [...] “There is a
vibrant, if marginal, tradition of writers who work within self-imposed formal
or linguistic constraints. It includes Samuel Beckett, Italo Calvino and
Vladimir Nabokov, but its most accomplished figure is George Perec who wrote La
Disparition, a novel without a single use of the letter ‘e.’ The days of Perec
and the experimental coterie Oulipo may seem distant but Christian Bo:x has
revived their spirit ... ” I see little relevance to VN’s creative
word-play. Discuss."
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JM: I understand Sergei's point. He is
denouncing something similar to what Borges once described as
"the sleepy-wink in a metaphor".
S.Soloviev departed from VN's reference to a
miracle described in the New Testament that has been joined
by VN to the image of insects walking over a thin film of water. Harris'
"thin ice" is not an elegant or apt image to refer to this connection.
Besides, he also seems to have missed VN's point in "Transparent
Things".
( In another warm-weather country, Brazil, we say
"palpos de aranha" to refer to "skating on thin ice" (in the sense of being "in
a pickle") and this suggests the exact image of a spider with its soft
cushioned paws ("palpos") moving over the water - but this way off
VN's original analogy... )
Like Stan, I cannot see the relevance of
comparing VN and French "literary constraints" . The only vowels
in Perec's name are "e" and he once stated that he needed
such constraints to be able to write and, obviously, this
is not something he and VN shared. VN enjoyed math and chess
games, they create a different kind of challenge (would Stan consider these
tactics as some kind of "constraint"?) Someone
in the Pynchon list * considered this discipline as coming closer to
R.Frost, something equally debatable including how VN would "rank himself" in
relation to Frost...
PS
My answer to B.Boyd's comments on Osberg,
today, failed to mention [ in relation
to Darkbloom: “Osberg: another good-natured anagram,
scrambling the name of a writer with whom the author of Lolita has been
rather comically compared.] that Borges' scramble
into "Osberg" had really been mentioned by none other than
"Vivian Darkbloom"...
We all know that VD is VN's own scrambled
name : ie - when he (VN) "scrambles" both authors' name ( his own
and Borges') this is somehow a proof of his "good-natured" acceptance
of a "comic comparison"...
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* Former N-L postings related to
OULIPO ( Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle"):
1.Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:23:49 -0700 From: Malignd ( in
From: "pynchon-l-digest" forwarded to N-L by Don B.Johnson)
"Shade ranked himself behind Frost. Probably VN would too,
probably so would the rest of us. Pertinent to this issue of rhyme --Frost wrote
in often complex rhyme schemes because he believed strongly in form, and
because he liked the challenge of writing within formal restraint. I'm not sure
that makes him anti-modern; on the basis of the above he might have joined
Oulipo."
2. 04 de Mar de 2008: After reading once more "The
Vane Sisters" (1959), I was reminded of Italo Calvino's 1979 novel[...] It is
part of a project that some connected to "Oulipo" ( Queneau's group) with
research into mathematics and new forms of writing and others to the "aesthetics
of reception" [...]Has any Nabokov scholar worked with VN's metalinguistics and
hypernovels in connection to Calvino?"