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Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

Oh, Closer... no, I still have it here. I don't know when I'll get to see it... the weekend probably. It's top of my To Watch list, though. :)
 
steffee said:
Oh, Closer... no, I still have it here. I don't know when I'll get to see it... the weekend probably. It's top of my To Watch list, though. :)
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Steffee,
Take your time, no hurry.
Only one of us is dying to hear if you think Natalie Portman would be the right choice for Lolita to stick the dagger into Humbert. :D Or otherwise humble him, but I prefer dagger. :)
Peder
 
For general information

steffee said:
It's the subject matter of Nabokov's books that bothers me a little....I get a feeling of apprehension, to say the least.
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Steffee, StillILearn, SFG75
In various ways the questions of what kind of person Nabokov was, and why he wrote the kinds of stories he did, have come up several times.

I've been looking at Boyd's Vladimir Nabokov, The Russian Years, and pp4-5 of the Introduction have several long paragraphs which have a little bit for everone, so here are some excerpts:
"But Nabokov was always a loner, and an account of his life should concentrate on the riddle of his personality and the way it shapes his art. Three traits stand out. First, his unequaled self-assurance.....Second his intense almost ruthlessly concentrated feelings toward others...Third, his unrelenting individualism.....

He had a fascination for human perversity, for the insane, the cruel, the sexually deviant. But although he himself was decidely singular, he was also quite "normal:" lucidly sane, outraged by cruelty, committed to faithful love after a youth of energetic sexual adventure. Part of my task is to explain why Nabokov could create characters as bizarre as Humbert, Kinbote, or Hermann and allow us to see out from within their minds. Imagination cannot thrive in a vacuum. He knowingly extrapolated from his own personality.....

Because Nabokov valued the liberating force of consciousness he felt he had to understand how people could be imprisoned in madness, in obsession, or in everyday "solitary confinement of their souls."...

Another part of the challenge has been to tease out the harmony in Nabokov's life -- and the harmony between his life and his art -- without leaving out the inconsistencies......Nabokov declared he knew nothing of social class, and could remember twenty years later not only the cleaning lady of the laboratory where he once worked, but also her domestic troubles. How then could he appear so snobbish to so many? Such apparent contradictions can be resolved.
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StillILearn, It may be that I was hasty in guessing that you would probably not see a different Nabokov than the one you have already seen in Vera. After reading the above, maybe yes maybe no, and there may be different Nabokovs to be found in other works, such as Boyd's mammoth biography (above), or in Speak Memory. I haven't read enough of either to know, and I'm reluctant to recommend them without knowing much more about them.

For answers to the above questions, I'm afraid you all will have to refer to Boyd.

Peder
 
Peder said:
I've been looking at Boyd's Vladimir Nabokov, The Russian Years, and pp4-5 of the Introduction have several long paragraphs which have a little bit for everone, so here are some excerpts:
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I think I might have been hasty. The Boyd one does sound appealing, having read those snippets and a couple of (Amazon) reviews... still, it would have to be after finishing Ada and The Enchanter, and reading Transparent Things and Pale Fire which come next (and nextest) on my TBR, and Pnin too, since I bought it with Enchanter.
 
steffee said:
I think I might have been hasty. The Boyd one does sound appealing, having read those snippets and a couple of (Amazon) reviews... still, it would have to be after finishing Ada and The Enchanter, and reading Transparent Things and Pale Fire which come next (and nextest) on my TBR, and Pnin too, since I bought it with Enchanter.
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Steffee,
That sounds like a very good strategy to me! At two volumes and 1400 pages the total Boyd biography seems daunting, even to me. And I'm still not sure it is meant to be read; or if one started one mght never read another thing for a long long time. I think it was you who said that nobody has ever actually read Finnegan's Wake. :confused: Well, Boyd's bio may be close to the same category.
I'll let you know if I ever start. :)
For the moment I am just going to be dipping in,
Peder
 
I bought both of the Boyds as well. (The Russian Years, and The American Years). I've only poked about a bit in the latter to go over the Lolita years, but I can't wait to get to the rest of it. Your paragraphs Peder certainly made me want to dive right in!

Perhaps the best way is to go over the section of Boyd that corresponds with whatever novel of VN's I am reading at that particular time. Hmmmm. :cool:
 
pontalba said:
Perhaps the best way is to go over the section of Boyd that corresponds with whatever novel of VN's I am reading at that particular time. Hmmmm. :cool:
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Pontalba,
You are so sensible! :D
That sounds like a perfect strategy, and one that I am certainly going to adopt.
Thanks for mentioning!
For the moment though I am tracking down brothers and sisters and will be reading about each of them. :eek:
Peder
 
Peder said:
Pontalba,
You are so sensible! :D
That sounds like a perfect strategy, and one that I am certainly going to adopt.
Thanks for mentioning!
For the moment though I am tracking down brothers and sisters and will be reading about each of them. :eek:
Peder
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:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :eek: Hah! Me? Sensible? rotfalol!!

/gasping for breath/ thanks though. :D

page numbers on relatives please. ;)
 
Peder said:
Pontalba,
You are so sensible! :D
That sounds like a perfect strategy, and one that I am certainly going to adopt.
Thanks for mentioning!
For the moment though I am tracking down brothers and sisters and will be reading about each of them. :eek:
Peder
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:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :eek: Hah! Me? Sensible? rotfalol!!

/gasping for breath/ thanks though. :D

page numbers on relatives please. ;)
 
For the moment though I am tracking down brothers and sisters and will be reading about each of them. :eek:
Peder
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Forgive me if I have not kept to my part of the bargain - yet! I just got home and logged on and the darndest things have been popping up. I'm going to post this here just so's I don't lose it. I'll be reading past posts tomorrow. :)

Maybe you also found this one about VN's brother? It's interesting!

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/17/nabokov/index.html

Brian Boyd, who is probably the single greatest living authority on Nabokov, believes that the real inspiration for Lucette was Sergei. "The centrality of Lucette in 'Ada,'" he argues in an e-mail, "in some ways seems to reflect Nabokov's sense of Sergei: the non-favorite, the frail one beside his confident sibling, the concentration camp victim ... the one we're invited to ignore, and even want to dismiss from the story, but eventually realize we should never have overlooked.
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Forgive me if I've been redundant here. And I went and took TBA with me on my trip instead of TE.

I'll make it up to you, I swear. :eek:
 
StillILearn Interesting article, thanks for posting it. In Vera, it seemed as he left Europe, that he wanted to seek his brother out, but the time constraints were so tight that he could not get to his brother to say good-bye without endangering their own passage. IOW, it was either leave with his family on what was probably the last chance to get out, or travel to the country to say good-bye. I have to go back and check, but I got the impression at the time that there were other more political differences between the brothers as well that could partially explain the emotional distance between them.
 
StillILearn said:
Maybe you also found this one about VN's brother? It's interesting!

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/17/nabokov/index.html
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Still,
No I hadn't come across that article. It is the second fine interview piece that I have seen in Salon and virtually all of it is new to me. Pontalba evidently remembers more from Vera than I do. I only recall, from somewhere, that the brothers went to the same all-boy's school and then on up to the same university. I am clearly going to have to brush the dust off the ol' grey cells. :(
I am sincerely glad that you called that article to my attention. It is a sorry thing that VN felt as he did, especially toward his own brother. And a sorrier thing that his brother perished as he did. It sounds as if there are the makings for a story yet to be told and I certainly hope the translators and researchers eventually produce a story worthy of Sergei's life and personality.
Many thanks, :)
Peder
 
pontalba said:
StillILearn Interesting article, thanks for posting it. In Vera, it seemed as he left Europe, that he wanted to seek his brother out, but the time constraints were so tight that he could not get to his brother to say good-bye without endangering their own passage. IOW, it was either leave with his family on what was probably the last chance to get out, or travel to the country to say good-bye. I have to go back and check, but I got the impression at the time that there were other more political differences between the brothers as well that could partially explain the emotional distance between them.
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V&V were fortunate to make it out of there at all. It must have been sheer agony for those who escaped to know that friends and famlly were suddenly beyond help.
 
Actually, Sophies Choice is one of those books that I put down due to the depressing images it conjured within me. :(
 
Hi, all,
The scene out the window here is almost all whited out now, with our first real and very late snow of Winter. It's time to get warm and comfortable with a book, and put another log on the fire. Except I don't have a fireplace. :-(
But there is this for a pleasant reverie of Lolita, from VN himself, a year after publication, (p316 TAL)
I have not reread Lolita since I went through the proofs in Spring of 1955. but I find it to be a delightful presence now that it hangs about the house like a summer day which one knows to be bright behind the haze. And when I thus think of Lolita, I seem always to pick out for special delectation such images as Mr. Taxovich, or that class list of Ramsdale School, or Charlotte saying "waterproof," or Lolita advancing in slow motion toward Humbert's gifts, or the pictures decorating the stylized garret of Gaston Godin, or the Kasbeam barber (who cost me a month of work), or Lolita playing tennis, or the hospital at Elphinstone, or pale, pregnant, beloved, irretrievable Dolly Schiller dying in Gray Star (the capital city of the book), or the tinkling sounds of the valley coming up the mountain trail (on which I caught the first known female of Lycaeides sublivens Nabokov). These are the nerves of the novel. These are the secret points, the subliminal coordinates by means of which the book is plotted...
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And they pull at my heart-strings and make me want to reread it yet again,
Enjoy the day!
Peder
 
Lovely, Peder. Thank you for that quote. How can I stay mad at a man who writes things like that? :rolleyes:

Maybe it was just Vera who I was beginning to dislike. Did you get the feeling that Stacy Schiff actually liked her? :confused:
 
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