Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's course Dead or Ecstatic, a Survey of English Literature I: the Middle Ages to 1800 (ENG 225.02):
Sighting: David Foster Wallace's Roll Call
Adam Plunkett's N+1 memoir and appreciation of David Foster Wallace as a teacher features this Nabokov-minded bit:
It took a student a few seconds to answer when called on “Joseph Reynolds, light of my life, fire of my loins” (name changed to protect privacy). My own soft underbelly was spoken (if not written) politeness, a Midwestern habit of deference and sorrys and if-you-don’t-minds my Midwestern teacher invariably mentioned or mocked or prodded in a mild recursive torment, recursive because politeness tends to be polite about itself.
It took a student a few seconds to answer when called on “Joseph Reynolds, light of my life, fire of my loins” (name changed to protect privacy). My own soft underbelly was spoken (if not written) politeness, a Midwestern habit of deference and sorrys and if-you-don’t-minds my Midwestern teacher invariably mentioned or mocked or prodded in a mild recursive torment, recursive because politeness tends to be polite about itself.
I Read!
Nabokovilia: Michael Chabon
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)
Afterword: ...the Zugzwang of Mendel Shpilman was devised by Reb Vladimir Nabokov and is presented in Speak, Memory. (p. 418)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000)
Here, in a weird radiance cast by the tails of a thousand writhing glowworms, sits on a barbarous throne a raven-haired giantess with immense green wings, sensuously furred antennae, and a sharp expression. She is, quite obviously, the Cimmerian moth goddess, Lo. We know it before she even opens her rowanberry mouth.
"You?" the goddess says, her feelers wilting in evident dismay. "You are the one the book has chosen? You are to be the next Mistress of the Night?"
Miss [Judy] Dark -- wreathed discreetly now in curling tufts of dry-ice smoke -- concedes that it seems unlikely. (p. 271)
Wonder Boys (1995)
"You have to keep with it," I told him. "You have to read on." I was making the argument I had made to myself, over the years -- to the harsh and unremitting editor who lived in the deepest recesses of my gut. It sounded awfully thin, spoken aloud at last. "It's that kind of a book. Like Ada, you know, or Gravity's Rainbow. It teaches you how to read it as you go along. Or -- Kravnik's." (p. 312)
Additional Chabon/Nabokov material:
"You have to keep with it," I told him. "You have to read on." I was making the argument I had made to myself, over the years -- to the harsh and unremitting editor who lived in the deepest recesses of my gut. It sounded awfully thin, spoken aloud at last. "It's that kind of a book. Like Ada, you know, or Gravity's Rainbow. It teaches you how to read it as you go along. Or -- Kravnik's." (p. 312)
Additional Chabon/Nabokov material:
- Michael Chabon at the Nabokov Museum (also collected in Maps and Legends)
- Michael Chabon on Wes Anderson
VN Sighting: Michael Chabon on Wes Anderson's Nabokovian Worlds
Vladimir Nabokov, his life cleaved by exile, created a miniature version of the homeland he would never see again and tucked it, with a jeweler’s precision, into the housing of John Shade’s miniature epic of family sorrow. Anderson—who has suggested that the breakup of his parents’ marriage was a defining experience of his life—adopts a Nabokovian procedure with the families or quasi families at the heart of all his films, from Rushmore forward, creating a series of scale-model households that, like the Zemblas and Estotilands and other lost “kingdoms by the sea” in Nabokov, intensify our experience of brokenness and loss by compressing them. That is the paradoxical power of the scale model; a child holding a globe has a more direct, more intuitive grasp of the earth’s scope and variety, of its local vastness and its cosmic tininess, than a man who spends a year in circumnavigation.Chabon himself is no stranger to world-building, or to Nabokovilia: he has made Nabokov references in Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and in The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
Sebald on Writing
I've been collecting some of my favorite writers' advice on writing, and it's a treat to add W.G. Sebald to the list -- all thanks to two students in that final semester in East Anglia who wrote down some of what Sebald said in class. There are no recordings of him teaching, apparently, and so the record is scant but awesome.
All of the advice is sensible, and useful to anyone, but the more of these I read, the more it feels like this is advice tailored specifically to the writer giving it, which makes total sense: "Fiction," Sebald says, "should have a ghostlike presence in it somewhere, something omniscient. It makes it a different reality." Which helps everyone out, but it is most helpful if the writer getting the advice is writing The Emigrants. Or The Rings of Saturn.
We tend to accidentally reflect our current preoccupations, our bent and disposition, when we are asked for advice: to turn the general and universal into the particular and the individual. I don't know if there's any helping it, nor do I think it's a bad thing -- the best advice comes from whatever you've wrestled yourself. But it does remind me that I used to proofread in Orlando for this outfit that put together the entertainment pages of regional and Metro newspapers, so I read hundreds of bridge columns, and also an untold number of astrology columns. And I was most struck that -- read sequentially, as I had to -- an astrology column reflects not so much the reader's state but the writer's. What his or her current nagging thought is. ("LIBRA: Today is a good day for shopping! SCORPIO: Maybe you should think about your savings. PISCES: Seize the day! Have fun!")
Not a bad thing, though. And a sensible way to go about the world: be generous with what you've learned, and be aware that what you've learned comes from stuff that's way particular to your own experience. What you carry with you shapes how you see the world, and how you go about the world. Which reminds me of the weird congruence between the discovery of the rubber heel and a famous passage from Santideva's Way of the Bodhisattva.
On the discovery of the rubber heel:
The story goes, as documented in a typewritten page dated 1926 (source unknown), in 1896 Humphrey O'Sullivan was a young printer in Lowell, Massachusetts. He walked on a stone floor while feeding a printing press, and to ease his footsteps, he bought a rubber mat on which to stand. His fellow employees kept "borrowing" the mat, so Humphrey cut out two pieces of the mat the size of his heels and nailed them to his shoes. The results pleased and astonished him.On how training one's mind is like wearing shoes:
Where would I find enough leatherOn quoting:
To cover the entire surface of the earth?
But with leather soles beneath my feet,
It’s as if the whole world has been covered
Don’t be afraid to bring in strange, eloquent quotations and graft them into your story. It enriches the prose. Quotations are like yeast or some ingredient one adds.
That last one is Sebald's. Good morning!
Bring Up Half the Bodies: Creative Writing Workshop: Fiction (ENG 219.01)
Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's course Bring Up Half the Bodies: Creative Writing Workshop:Fiction (ENG 219.01), taught by professor Juan Martinez:
- Course syllabus
- Story guidelines
- Peer Feedback guidelines
- Final portfolio guidelines
- First set of story constraints for story due 7 February 2013
- Second set of story constraints for story due 14 March 2013
- Third set of story constraints for story due 11 April 2013
- Our calendar of due dates, exams, and readings
Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.
English Communications II: ENG 112 07 & 12
Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's English Communications 2 course, sections 07 & 12 (ENG112.07 & ENG112.12):
- Course syllabus
- Project One guidelines
- Project Two guidelines
- Project Three guidelines
- Project Four guidelines
- Our calendar of conferences, due dates, and readings
Our Readings
- For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in Hard Fall
- Here is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in a Movie
- The Apology of Plato, by Socrates
- My Apology, by Woody Allen
- A selection of This I Believe essays
- David Foster Wallace's This is Water.
Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.
Sighting: Nabokov Tweets!
Great Beginnings!
And here's the full interview of Keret and Tinti talking about the stories in the episode, mine included.).
You can get to the actual MP3 of the episode here, where Cristin Milioti does an awesome job reading the piece.
Nabokovilia: Arthur Phillips' The Tragedy of Arthur
A year later, I am writhing to escape this web spun by two dead men, and literary executorship has become the most self-eradicating punishment Dante could have devised for an egotistical author. There was another writer born on my and Will's birthday, a hero of mine, whose son also signed his life over to promoting and protecting his father's works. I think of them both as these two other laughing corpses fling their bolas around my ankles. (187)
*
I wrote to my father, still, from Prague, wrote for him, still. The definition of insanity, the twelve-steppers have patiently taught me, one day at a time, is to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. I wrote for him, still. I have now written four novels, and I devised the idea of an anagram for him to decipher over years. The first letters of my titles of my novels are S, P, E, and A. I planned to write, with all my remaining years, books initialed S, H, A, K, E, R, and E, and then, maybe, A, N, D, M, E.
Shakespeare's lines are a nursery of titles for other, better writers: Pale Fire, Exit Ghost, Infinite Jest, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Sound and the Fury, Unnatural Acts, The Quick and the Dead, Against the Polack, To Be or Not to Be, Band of Brothers, Casual Slaughters. At the very least, I have never named one of my books after his stuff. (120)
More David Mitchell Nabokovilia: Ghostwritten
Look at her! Look at that woman. Febrile. Corvine. Black velvet clothes, not an ounce of sluttiness about her. Intelligent and alert, what's that book she's reading? And her skin -- that perfect West African black, so black it has a bluish tinge. Those gorgeous, proud lips. What's she reading. Tilt it this way a bit, love... Nabokov! I knew it. She has a brain!
*
Tim sighed. "Sorry, Marco. This is going to be protracted sibling stuff. Why don't you drop in next week after I've had a chance to read this lot? Oh, and I know this is Herod calling Thatcher a bit insensitive but you really need to change your shirt. And there's something white stuck in your hair. And a last word of advice -- I tell this to anyone trying to get a book finished -- steer clear of Nabokov. Nabokov makes anyone feel like a clodhopper.
Progress Report!
Here's what is currently on our coffee table: the rough draft of my novel. Most of the rough draft is staying, the stuff on the left -- maybe 3/5, maybe even 3/4. The stuff on the right is going away. The stuff that is staying is about to go through some major, major rewriting.
The chucking/major-rewriting is what you do -- what everyone does -- so the following remains a mystery:
- Why I somehow assume (and always assume) that whatever I write is going to emerge as this brilliant and perfect thing the first time around.
- Why -- even though I somehow know 1. is never going to happen -- I hope no one else will notice, which is also never the case.
- Why I despair when facing 1. & 2., even though it always happens, and then temporarily give up on the thing.
- Why I end up forgetting that there are ways one goes about fixing, finessing, and making something not-currently-awesome into something awesome -- and that they are not terribly mysterious, or even that laborious.
- Why I will forget this entire cycle the next time around.
Nabokov had some pretty strong words re. folks who displayed their rough drafts ("Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one's sputum.") So by way of apology for all the spit here is what is currently on our bay window (blanket, basket, Hodge, fox, elephant, flowers).
What is this? Where am I?
I've created this site as a temporary catch-all for material that would ordinarily make it into the Fulmerford site, a Vladimir Nabokov appreciation site: the idea is to create a quick place where material can be updated. (Very soon I'll be migrating large chunks of the old site into the blog -- it should make it much easier to navigate, for one thing. We'll see!)
Nabokov-related material can be easily found by clicking on the appropriate label.
Nabokov-related material can be easily found by clicking on the appropriate label.
There are a number of terrific places to find additional information on Nabokov, chief of which is Zembla. Others include
Contact Information
If you're trying to get in touch with me, here are some of the easiest ways to do so:
- You can e-mail me at fulmerford@gmail.com
- You can friend me at http://www.facebook.com/fulmerford
- You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/fulmerford
- You can see what I'm reading at Goodreads.
- My CV is available here.
Best,
Juan
Nabokovilia in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas
Speak, Memory. No, not a word. My neck moves. Hallelujah. Timothy Langland Cavendish can command his neck and his name has come home. November 7. I recall a yesterday and see a tomorrow. Time, no arrow, no boomerang, but a concertina. Bedsores. How many days have I lain here? Pass. How old is Tim Cavendish? Fifty? Seventy? A hundred? How can you forget your age? (354)
FYS 100 02 & 06: Obsessed
Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's First-Year Seminars Obsessed, sections 02 & 06 (FYS 100.02 & FYS 100.06):
Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.
- Syllabus (FYS 100.02) (MWF 8-8:50am)
- Syllabus (FYS 100.06) (MWF 10-10:50am)
- Monday 9/10 individual conference meeting times
- Monday 10/15 individual conference meeting times
- Helpful links and resources for the essays
- Our calendar of due dates, conferences, and readings
- Online self-evaluation form for Friday 28 September 2012
- Essay 1 rubric
Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.
ENG 319.01: Craft of a Genre: Fiction
Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's course Cracked Kettles for Dancing Bears, Craft of a Genre: Fiction (ENG 319.01), taught by professor Juan Martinez:
Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.
- Course syllabus
- Story guidelines
- Peer Feedback guidelines
- Exercises
- Formal constraints for story due 9/20/12
- Formal constraints for story due 10/18/12
- Our calendar of due dates, exams, and readings
ENG 225.01: English Literature I: the Middle Ages to 1800, Fall 2012, Lebanon Valley College
Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's course Dead or Ecstatic, a Survey of English Literature I: the Middle Ages to 1800 (ENG 225.01):
Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.
Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.
Nabokovilia: Cheryl Strayed's Wild
After I was done talking, Spider said, "I've got a story for you, Cheryl. I think it's along the lines of what you're talking about. I was reading about animals a while back and there was this motherfucking scientist in France back in the thirties or forties or whenever the motherfuck it was and he was trying to make art pictures like the kinds of pictures in serious motherfucking paintings that you see in museums and shit. So the scientist keeps showing the apes these paintings and giving them charcoal pencils to draw with and then then one day one of the apes finally draws something but it's not the art pictures that it draws. What it draws is the bars of its own motherfucking cage. Its own motherfucking cage! Man, that's the truth, ain't it? I can related to that and I bet you can too, sister."
"I can," I said earnestly.
(Explanation below the fold if the Nabokov bit isn't coming immediately to mind)
"As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage."
Vladimir Nabokov, On a Book Entitled Lolita
Fallen Fallen is the Confectionery
About a block down from the Farmer's Market was this building with its preserved ad and its abandoned entrance to what must have been an office. The ad reads, "Walla Walla Candy Co. / Manufacturers and Jobbers of Confectionery." There was lots of awesome graffiti by the office, some of it revised: "Repent," and "Flee 
