Nabokovilia: Getting It Published
I'm nearly 100% that this bit from William Germano's Getting It Published
, is intentional Nabokovilia (and if so, way witty, given the professor's field of study):
, is intentional Nabokovilia (and if so, way witty, given the professor's field of study):An editor in psychology might acquire thirty titles a year in the field, five of which will come in through the efforts of Professor Quilty, the distinguished abnormal psychologist, whose extensive contacts have enabled her to build the respected series Narcolepsy Today.
Nabokovilia: Zadie Smith's On Beauty
From page 315 of Zadie Smith's immensely pleasurable, terribly funny, aptly titled On Beauty
:
)
:She did it. She jumped off the bed and into his lap. His erection was blatant, but first she coolly drank the rest of his wine, pressing down on him as Lolita did on Humbert, as if he were just a chair she happened to sit on. No doubt she had read Lolita. And then her arm went round the back of his neck and Lolita turned into a temptress (maybe she had learned from Mrs Robinson too), lasciviously sucking his ear, and then from temptress she moved to affectionate high-school girlfriend, sweetly kissing the corner of his mouth. But what kind of sweetheart was this? He had barely started to return her kiss when she commenced groaning in a disconcertingly enthusiastic manner, and this was followed by a strange fluting business with her tongue, catching Howard off guard.Smith, incidentally, is 3 for 3: her two previous novels also include a Nabokov reference. (Also check out her essay on Barthes and Nabokov in Changing My Mind.
)
Nabokovilia: Jim Barnes and Julian Barnes
From a poem in Jim Barnes's A Season of Loss
:
In the house where Nabokov finished Lolita
the foundation begins to settle, walls sinking in
around a curving staircase, Lolita's legs still
From Julian Barnes' Nothing to Be Frightened Of
:
It could, I suppose, be worse. It almost always can -- which is some mild consolation. We might fear the prenatal abyss as well as the post-mortal one. Odd, but not impossible. Nabokov in his autobiography describes a "chronophobiac" who experienced panic on being shown home movies of the world in the months before he was born: the house he would inhabit, his mother-to-be leaning out of a window, an empty pram awaiting its occupant. Most of us would be unalarmed, indeed cheered, by all this; the chronophobiac saw only a world in which he did not exist, an acreage of himlessness. Nor was it any consolation that such an absence was mobilizing itself irresistibly to produce his future presence. Whether this phobia reduced his level of post-mortal anxiety, or on the other hand doubled it, Nabokov does not relate.
: In the house where Nabokov finished Lolita
the foundation begins to settle, walls sinking in
around a curving staircase, Lolita's legs still
From Julian Barnes' Nothing to Be Frightened Of
:It could, I suppose, be worse. It almost always can -- which is some mild consolation. We might fear the prenatal abyss as well as the post-mortal one. Odd, but not impossible. Nabokov in his autobiography describes a "chronophobiac" who experienced panic on being shown home movies of the world in the months before he was born: the house he would inhabit, his mother-to-be leaning out of a window, an empty pram awaiting its occupant. Most of us would be unalarmed, indeed cheered, by all this; the chronophobiac saw only a world in which he did not exist, an acreage of himlessness. Nor was it any consolation that such an absence was mobilizing itself irresistibly to produce his future presence. Whether this phobia reduced his level of post-mortal anxiety, or on the other hand doubled it, Nabokov does not relate.
Postcards: Steinberg's 18 October 1969 New Yorker Cover
(visible: Nabokov (between "Gogol" and "Hi Nabor") and Ada (between "Ada" and "Hedda"). (Via the Nabokv-L Listserv.)
Nabopop: Museum Mouth's "Outside"
“Outside” name-drops writers Vladimir Nabokov and J.D. Salinger. Other tunes like “Virginia” – Kuehn calls them “slow jams” – incorporate keyboards and have a more deliberate, moodier feel. At live shows, however, “we play everything fast,” Levin said.(The rest of the story is here.)
Museum Mouth at Tumblr / Museum Mouth at MySpace (where "Outside" can be streamed)
Haeckel_Kunstformen_157.jpg
I want this for wallpaper. Physical wallpaper. Real paper on real walls. Jellyfish(ish) wallpaper!
SIGHTING: Nabokov's Color Field
Carrie Frye contrasts Nabokov's color field to Muriel Spark's:
Through this "scattering of nutshells" (Lane's phrase) you get a portrait of Nabokov as a writer. I was reminded of it by Maud's similar collage of first sentences from nine Muriel Spark novels. Interesting to compare the two. For example, Nabokov's color field: azure shading into quivering blue, vivid greens and a spot of red. The only colors in the Spark selection: "almost white" and the "clear crystal" you come to after the "murk & smog" -- a fittingly chilly palette for a writer who writes as cleanly and sparely as Spark does.The rest here. (Via Maud Newton)
Pale-blue Gingham shirt, white pants, brown jacket
This look, featured in The Sartorialist, is just plain awesome, down to the gloves in the breast pocket (I'm not a fan of gloves, generally, but they do look good there: it's like you've got a little pet squid! (better yet if you've got a pair in cordovan, I bet)):
Buddying it Up with Borges
Me and my very short Quixote-ish goof of a "sudden fiction" show up right after Jorge Luis Borges in Norton's Sudden Fiction Latino
. (Vd.! Table of Contents.)
Buy eight copies!
. (Vd.! Table of Contents.)Buy eight copies!
Nabokovilia: Pamuk's _Museum of Innocence_
I've been avoiding Pamuk for a while but may need to read Museum of Innocence
for some Nabokovilia:
for some Nabokovilia:At a third level the book can be read as a meditation on the compulsion of collecting and, even, on the act of writing itself. For what is writing fiction but an obsessive collecting of and rearrangement of memories. The story is filled with intertextual references to the works of some of Pamuk’s favourite European authors: Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Nabokov and, above all, Proust. It could have easily have been entitled In Remembrance of Things Past.
Nabopop: The Man Who Wasn't There
The Coen brothers's The Man Who Wasn't There
references Lolita
? (I saw it, years ago, didn't catch the reference.)
Viz (from the Amazon DVD description): Almost in spite of the obsessive cultural references (flying saucers, Nabokov's Lolita, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), Ed Crane steps neatly from the fray as one of cinema's most memorably disenchanted characters.
references Lolita? (I saw it, years ago, didn't catch the reference.)Viz (from the Amazon DVD description): Almost in spite of the obsessive cultural references (flying saucers, Nabokov's Lolita, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), Ed Crane steps neatly from the fray as one of cinema's most memorably disenchanted characters.
Nabokov's Chess Sonnets
The sonnets are available at Chess Aficionado. From the site:
This is the first English verse translation of the trio of linked chess sonnets that Vladimir Nabokov published in the Russian émigré journal Rul' in Berlin in November 1924. It is certainly the first by an eighty-year old! Who, OK, needed some assistance. Nabokov could, and should, have published an English translation himself, but sadly he never did. Uniquely, the sonnets, taken together, link chess, chess problems, chess history and - sex. Nabokov was to marry his lifelong partner-to-be Vera in 1925.(Via the Nabokv-L Listserv.)
Camelhair blazer, navy knit tie, navy checked shirt
Grey suit, navy-blue vest
There are other combinatorial possibilities in this GQ slideshow, but I like this one the best.
SIGHTING: Humbert Humbert in Sweet Valley High
The return of Sweet Valley High, with some of the characters grown older, prompts thoughts of Humbert Humbert revisiting Mrs. Schiller for this New Yorker blogger:
Somehow the thought of all these glorified young characters getting old puts me in mind of the final chapters of "Lolita," when Humbert visits Lolita (now Dolly) to find her “frankly and hugely pregnant” with a dog like a fat dolphin:
Her pale freckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins and arms had lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. She wore a brown, sleeveless cotton dress and sloppy felt slippers.
It's a scene of horrible and excruciating diminution, made more agonizing by the fact that Humbert sees how sordid her life is—her body is—but loves her anyway. Of course, this isn’t Nabokov we’re talking about.
)Leaning From Las Vegas
- A Continuous Lean's Michael Williams visits town, posts some terrific vintage Kodakromes.
- Weekend Stubble's Paul Collins stumbles on this Wikipedia entry: List of Las Vegas Casinos That Never Opened.
- John D'Agata writes a dark dark dark (but good & sharply observed) thing for The Believer on the town (well worth getting for that alone: lots of sharp Dave Hickey quotes but even better for D'Agata's on the town's fundamental inability to recognize or talk about its many rough patches).
Nabokovilia: Speak, Memorates
An article on Tono Monogatari, in the 2010 January Believer issue, is entitled Speak, Memorates. (Other McSweeney's-connected Speak, Memory
variations include Tom Bissell's Speak, Commentary
and George Saunders's Eat, Memory
.)
variations include Tom Bissell's Speak, Commentary and George Saunders's Eat, Memory.)
SIGHTING: John Shade Sings!
Recording under the pseudonym John Shade (a name he gleaned from a fictional poet in the Vladimir Nabokov novel “Pale Fire’’), Godowsky has released his debut album, “All You Love Is Need.’’(The rest at The Boston Globe.)
The musician's official web site is at http://johnshademusic.com/
Nabokov Poster
A Nabokov poster (for a design class): love the owl & the colors (see the note -- she's fixing the typo):
SIGHTING: God Bless the German Federal Film Fund
A Nabokov movie in the works? Maybe:
Meanwhile, Christine Berg, project manager of the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), told ScreenDaily that only two projects have been funded by the “German spend” incentive programme so far this year. These are Corinna Belz’s painter portrait Gerhard Richter – Ohne Titel and Harald Bergmann’s musings on a film about Vladimir Nabokov, 37 Karteikarten Zu Nabokov.(The rest here.)