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Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

News flash!

Over on a separate thread, Sitaram is discussing B. P. Myers' Reader's Manifesto. A reader reviewer on amazon notes that Nabokov is used as one of the favorable standards for comparison. Yay VN!
Peder
[Maybe this is the wrong thread, but it is the one active at the moment and I couldn't wait! :D ]
 
steffee said:
Aww, lol at your excitement, Peder! :D :D
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Steffee,
Well, that was hot smokin' news! I had to tell someone. Immediately!
Especially the way Peters apparently shreds completely the authors he doesn't like. :)

Peder
 
Peder said:
Over on a separate thread, Sitaram is discussing B. P. Myers' Reader's Manifesto. A reader reviewer on amazon notes that Nabokov is used as one of the favorable standards for comparison. Yay VN!
Peder
[Maybe this is the wrong thread, but it is the one active at the moment and I couldn't wait! :D ]
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:D :D and :cool: :cool:

;)
 
Fooled again

Ho hum.
I now have A Reader's Manifesto by B.R. Myers and it has been rather a let-down. But quite by serendipity this discussion turns out to be in the correct thread after all! :eek:
After noticing that Myers was reported to regard Nabokov favorably, I had hopes of finding selections in the book from VN's works and I thought it would be interesting to see what they were and what Peters said about them. In fact, the list of references at the back lists Nabokov three times -- for his Bend Sinister, Laughter in the Dark, and Lectures on Russian Literature -- so my hopes were moderately high to begin with. However, the only allusion to Nabokov that I have yet come across in the text, half-way through, is Peters' reference to perhaps the most famous sentences from Lolita [!]
What gives Auster away is his weakness for erudite facetiousness. In passages like these it becomes so obvious what Nabokivian effect he is aiming for, and so obvious that he can't pull it off, that the whole house of cards comes tumbling down:
When I met Kitty Wu, she called me by several other names... Foggy for example, which was used only on special occasions, and Cyrano which developed for reasons that will become clear later. Had Uncle Victor lived to meet her, I'm sure he would have appreciated, in his own small way, that Marco had at last set foot in China.
Moon Palace - Paul Auster​
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A Reader's Manifesto - B.R. Myers​
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And that is the extent of any mention of Nabokov right there in the text. :( However, VN is clearly not Peters' main concern. Rather it is what the subtitle of the book quite accurately claims it to be, An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose. In that connection Peters makes it clear that he dislikes Paul Auster's writing, among other authors, and the commentary above is only a mild example of Peters' acid tongue.
However, a close skim of the remainder of the book has failed to turn up any further mentions of Nabokov, so that may be it. If I find any others, I'll mention them in the appropriate Nabokov threads.

Plowing on,
Peder
 
Peder said:
Ho hum.
I now have A Reader's Manifesto by B.R. Myers and it has been rather a let-down. But quite by serendipity this discussion turns out to be in the correct thread after all! :eek:
.....
However, a close skim of the remainder of the book has failed to turn up any further mentions of Nabokov, so that may be it. If I find any others, I'll mention them in the appropriate Nabokov threads.

Plowing on,
Peder
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Vindication!
I did find the remaining three mentions in the text that were implied by the three works included among the references. However, I'll post them under the general Everything Nabokov thread for strict consistency, since they do not relate to Lolita.
I know, I know! How little you care. :D
Pedeer
 
OOPS! Myers, not Peters

I see that I have erroneously referred to B.R.Myers as 'Peters' in the previous posts. That didn't help at Borders either when I tried to describe the book I was looking for. Oy! :eek: :eek:
Please just put it all down to an extended 'senior moment' :D
Peder
 
Whilst mucking about I found this interview with Stephen Schiff (wrote the screenplay for A.L.'s version of Lolita). http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/schiff2.htm

I can't remember if we already had this posted, but its interesting all the same, so if its a repeat, sorry. :)

And this somewhat tear the newer film to shreds....
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR23.5/Stone.html by Alan A. Stone

but has some hilarious and very insightful comments about Nabokov himself.
A small exerpt from the last link:
Schiff, a long time film reviewer, knew that you cannot get your foot in the door with mainstream American moviegoers unless you put someone on the screen with whom they can identify. His unlikely candidate was Humbert Humbert (in the novel an ex-mental patient, alcoholic, sexually insatiable pedophile who is supremely narcissistic and the ultimate snob). Although there seem to be endless layers of irony in the novel, beginning with Humbert Humbert's name, Schiff ignored them all for the sake of psychological realism.
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and
Nabokov would have cringed. His Humbert shares his disdain for psychoanalytic understanding, which Nabokov described as "applying Greek myths to one's private parts." Naturally, Humbert thrives on playing games with his psychiatrists when they try to analyze his sexual orientation. During one of his several stays in the asylum in Europe before he comes to America, he feeds the doctors false dreams and is delighted when they decide he is a homosexual. Humbert's character in the novel is a game mocking the standard psychoanalytic cant about infantile sexuality, pedophilia, and sexual fixation.
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Ponalba,
That first selection is riotous!
Someone on the screen whom moviegoers can identify with? Sure! Coming right up! Let's try ex-mental patient, alcoholic, sexually insatiable pedophile who is supremely narcissistic and the ultimate snob. We can all identify with that! Rrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiight! :rolleyes: Now at least we know the answer to "What were they thinking?" Amazing! Especially if one ignores all the layers to get right to the nub of (our) psychological realism.
It definitely casts the members of this thread in an entirely new light. j/k j/k j/k :D
But that Nabokov would have cringed? I wonder what gave them that idea? :rolleyes: again.
And BTW, I like your new tag line. That scene may have shown Martin at his finest.
Peder
 
The second of the links (from Boston Review) really cracked me up as far as that goes. Makes more sense in context, but the interviewer made some good points. It was all I could do not to simply quote the whole thing! :D
 
Continued from that other thread

Aww, they been trying to smirch little Lo's reputation again over there in that other thread, painting her as a fast little article.
She's actually a fine girl! A little coltish sometimes, perhaps, but a wonderful girl. She loves tennis and she's fantastic at hide-and-seek.
It's true that she can already flirt a grown man's head right off his shoulders. And that she can cause him to have reveries that are even better and more memorable than any actual reality. And for twirling a man around her pinky, there's none better. You should see the gifts she gets! And as far as behaving herself, the best! She can have a man crawling on all fours hungering for her and simply turn him away with a sweet "Not now. I'm reading." Just give her a few more years as woman-in-training and all the males will be hungering after her. In fact, let's step back off the sidewalk now, and crowd into this doorway. That low rumble you hear in the distance, getting louder, is the sound of Lo and her entourage walking along. Pretty soon they'll surge right on past here. What's that? You can't see her in the crowd? Yes, well, she a little shorter than the rest, but she's definitely there, in the middle of that mob. You can tell by all the pushing and shoving to get a look at her.
It's strange, but some just can't see the promise in her. At all! :confused:
Peder
 
Looks like the besmircher of our lil Lo has gone into hiding. I can't think why;). And Peder.... you sound like a man who is truly smitten:) Not that one can blame you. Although, I do believe our lil Lo should come with a warning - can you imagine her power as an adult. Knowledge and experience are very powerful tools indeed. Or may be she'd be like so many child-stars who disappear and blend in with the rest of us 'normal' folk as time ticks by.
 
Peder /sniff/ our little girl has grown up, and gone away. As they will. But it is a verra nice parade shes been given. :cool:

Breaca now there my girl, define Normal, and Then Apply it to anyone 'round these parts! LOL;)
 
StillILearn said:
What? Where? Why? When? Who? :eek: Which?
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Still,
It was that SFG guy! I reccanized the voice.
We had all moved over for a nice summer encampment on the Davinci Code thread, and was hootin and hollerin it up, when he turns up and starts sayin things like ... well, you know ....things. :)
Peder
 
The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov edited by Julian W. Connolly

The Lolita phenomenon from Paris to Tehran by Ellen Pifer

Pifer is discussing Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran as follows in part: p.197

Summarizing their discussion of the novel, Azar Nafisi says, "'Moppet,' 'little monster,' corrupt,' shallow,' 'brat' - these are some of the terms assigned to Lolita by her [early] critics. Then there are others," Nafisi adds. "who condemn Lolita because they feel Nabokov turned the rape of a twelve year-old into an aesthetic experience. We in our class disagreed with all of these interpretations. We unanimously...agreed with Vera Nabokov," who privately commented in her diary,"I wish...somebody would notice the tender description of the child's helplessness, her pathetic dependence on monstrous HH, and her heartrending courage all along [,] culminating in that squalid but essentially pure and healthy marriage, and her letter, and her dog." The source of Nafisi's unidentified citations is Vera, Stacy Schiff's 1999 biography of Nabokov's wife....
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And...
As Nafisi relates in her memoir, these sheltered young women-forced to hide their faces, in public, behind a veil and condemned, even imprisoned if found to be wearing lipstick or nail polish-proved astute readers of Lolita. .............Humbert's efforts to pose as Lolita's guardian in order to control her every action struck a chord with these young women, all of whom were being subjected to the watchful "protection" of an invasive regime.
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Freedom.
 
pontalba said:
The Lolita phenomenon from Paris to Tehran by Ellen Pifer

Pifer is discussing Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran as follows in part: p.197


And...

Freedom.
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Wonderful post, pontalba! Thank you for these quotes. Exactly right on the money. That says it all.
 
Pontalba,
Very nice selections!
It would seem that Vera had a soft spot for the little girl.
That is very nice to know. :)
Peder
 
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