A heavy Cassell Illustrated edition "The
Little Black Book", by Laura Price, Jenny Doubt, J.Round and Lucy
Daniel (general editor) plus close to two-hundred contributors, offers
1000 of the "most astonishing moments of twentieth-and twenty-first century
literature from around the world, laid out decade by decade...both a story of
the century's books and a picture of the century through its
books".
Lucy Daniel is a reviewer and critic , articles in The
Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, The Guardian, the Daily
Telegraph, Time Out, Mslexia and FT Magazine. Doctoral thesis on the cultural
contexts for reading modernism.
( Cf. Cassell book, An Hachette Livre UK
Company; 2007 Octopus Publishing Group Ltd.)
It offers four independent categories for
the inclusion of an author's name or reference: Key Book, Key Character, Key Passage, Key
Event.
V.N. has been mentioned in three.
In 1940-1949, p.298, one of the
Key Events is "Vladimir Nabokov arrives in the United
States." (the other events mentioned close to this are:
"Darkness at Noon exposes Stalin's show trials" "James Jones is
present at the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor", "Underground Press Les
Editions de Minuit if founded in Paris" and "The Last Tycoon is
published by Edmund Wilson.". The entry sports short commentaries by Jad
Adams.
It was chosen as "key" because: "After his move to
the United States Nabokov wrote in English. With its penetrating depiction of
American suburban life, its road trip across the USA through the cheap
commercialism of the nation in the halcyon years of the 1950s, in
Lolita, Nabokov wrote the Great American Novel. A later Key Event, "Maurice Girodias launches Olympia Press, the
avant-garde publisher" mentions "Lolita's" importance to transform the press's
reputation (p.379)
A hundred pages later and a decade, in
1950-1959 on p.396/397, as Key
Character, we encounter "Lolita" ( a
Kubrick movie depiction, with red heart-shaped glasses and a lollypop
that illustrates the opposite page - and Lolita even made it as the
overall "Book" cover-image). Short commentaries in the box by Kasia Boddy.
Inspite of the limited space in this note on "Lolita" ("synonymous with
sexual precociousness") Broddy found sufficient scope to mention
M.Maar's article on Heniz von Lichberg's 1916 novella and other
sensationalist data - "recently challenged by Emily Prager and A.M.Homes",
and those who revenged Lolita by "rewriting Nabokov's novel from her point
of view".
Almost two-hundred pages more, in
1960-1969 on page 458, we come to, as
a Key Book, "Pale Fire". Comments written
by Kiki Benzon. Other references to books in its
vicinity were R. Yates' "Revolutionary Road",
"The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin and "Sex and the Single Girl" by Helen
Gurley Brown.
That's All, Folks!
JM
PS: The selection of events and books (
quoted above) has been most perplexing! Has any
Nabokovian written comments about this "little black book" edition and how
can I read the remarks that were made?
I should have added to the December 16, 2008 2:31 PM posting on [NABOKOV-L]
Lolita, Dolores Haze,Swinburne, an indication of James Marcus,NY,
at online House of Mirth: Odds and ends: Nabokov,
Victoria', for the E.Wilson quote and additional
lines.