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Vladimir Nabokov

Originally posted by Peder "Reductive propensities that accompanied the popularization?!" "Psycho-babble that was promoted by the psychoanalytic movement?!"
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:rolleyes: :eek:
Professor Greene is enough to make my head hurt.
I wonder how he got the idea to attack that particular subject to begin with, considering its not his field of expertise?

But thats a wonderful analysis (you should excuse the word) of Greene's book Peder.
Freudian Slip? Hah! Good one. :D
 
pontalba said:
I wonder how he got the idea to attack that particular subject to begin with, considering its not his field of expertise?
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Actually, Pontalba,
Your question is very much to the point (why am I not surprised?)!
As an English Professor, Greene claims that his interest was in doing a literary comparison of the two as writers. That's not quite his phrase, but close enough without the book in front of me any more. And I'm not quite sure what that kind of comparison would have entailed, because I didn't see much of it, if any. He veered immediately toward the ideas of psychoanalysis and how he thought they applied to Nabokov the person and his writings. So I didn't think it worth the time to point out his alleged objective. I figured the examples would speak for themselves and be the only way to capture the flavor of the book.
Many thanks for asking,
Peder
 
It sounds to me as though Greene simply has a beef with Nabokov, and used that method to attack. Why compare the two as writers? One is fictional literature, and one supposedly is psycobabble, er, I mean intrepretative psychology, however it should be termed. IOW an analyst.

Apples and Oranges.

Am I that far off? :confused:
 
pontalba said:
It sounds to me as though Greene simply has a beef with Nabokov, and used that method to attack. Why compare the two as writers? One is fictional literature, and one supposedly is psycobabble, er, I mean intrepretative psychology, however it should be termed. IOW an analyst.

Apples and Oranges.

Am I that far off? :confused:
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Pontalba,
No, absolutely not! And I didn't understand it in the first place.
I agree that Greene has the typical Freudian analyst's posture that "I know better than you what dark secrets you are hiding behind your facade." And I can imagine why that would have infuriated Nabokov, as well as most people who are exposed to that blunt sort of all-knowing superiority and cynical arrogance.

As to possible writerly purpose, there was that quote in my first post about Freud's writing becoming more subject to a comparative approach, and Nabokov's becoming more theoretical. But that lost me completely. And still does, since I didn't see any evidence in the book to even begin to know what Greene meant by it.

So yes, the simple view prevails. Freud is Greene's hero and Nabokov is Greene's subject for amateur Freudian analysis. IMO.

Peder

PS there were some self-congratulatory words spoken by Freud, which Green quoted approvingly, that would have further supported that contention, and in spades. But they are now beyond easy reach. I could click for another book from amazon, but my enthusiasm just isn't there for that. :eek:
 

SIL
I'm posting this over here as it speaks to something I'd previously posted regarding Field's biography of VN. This is from your link (neat!) over in Harlequins! thread...
Brian Boyd, Nabokov's second biographer, finds it hard at times to distinguish between what Field made up and what the biographee may have tried to suppress after reading the manuscript.25 That Nabokov was authoritarian, sometimes bullying, appears clearly in his letters. He once derided Field somewhat ruthlessly after the latter had sent him a copy of his own novel, Fractions.26 That may also explain why Field, to take his revenge and free himself from the author's (alleged?) tyranny, drifted toward slander of the Nabokov family. An unscholarly reaction, no doubt, but one which is almost understandable after all that had occured between Nabokov and his biographer. Field, who had begun his career as a critic of Nabokov's works, was apparently acting as if he enjoyed the same freedom in his presentation of the author's life as he did in his interpretation of his novels: he tried not only to tell the story as he knew it but to identify the sources of Nabokov's desires and frustrations, to describe the authorial figure beyond the known facts.
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Beyond known facts. Exactly as I thought. And believe. :(

Thanks for a wonderful link! :cool:
 
My dear people i do apologise for not contributing to the sebastian knight thread or anything in general, I'm usually online in net cafe which isn't the most enjoyable place to post from i'll try and rectify it in the near future.

On a another note i bought Lolita Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1997 hardback edition which was a tie in with the modern film being that it has Mr. Irons on the cover. It cost me 7.50 euro so i'm a happy camper
 
Hi Ms.!
Long time no see.
But glad to hear from you whenever, however you can manage it!
And glad to hear the little girl is still selling.
Welcome to the fold. :)
Peder

PS Sebastian Knight is still open, of course, for anything you'd like to add. Perhaps maybe even your vote on what that ending is supposed to mean, since we are all a little confused, I think. :confused:
P.
 
Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years by Brian Boyd

Well I've been mucking about again in BB's bio of VN, and I found more evidence of Andrew Field's perfidy. Field has written [evidently] four versions of Nabokov's bio, each less authentic than the last.
In early May, Field sent Nabokov the revised draft of his manuscript, now reduced to 480 pages. In his covering letter Field claimed that he had had conclusive evidence of everything he had written and that even his errors had their sound reasons, such as an incorrect street name taken faithfully from a reportorial transcript. He reproached Nabokov for having given him so little help and suggested they had perhaps reached a stalemate. In reply Nabokov wondered at "the miraculous fact of your not being really responsible for any of the blunders in your book." He pointed out that there were two ways out of their situation: "Either we scrap the entire project (which would be a pity) or you keep the promise you made me at the very start of the venture. I quote: '...the final word as to what would be better deleted will rest in your hands.' " He also made it clear that he sniffed blackmail in Field's hint that if they were going to quarrel there were some things not in the biography they ought to discuss first.
Before leaving Montreux for the summer to concentrate on his new novel, he had time only for a brief glance through the revised biography, but as he told his New York lawyer in apprising her of the situation, that glance sufficed to reveal that "most of the rot and nastiness is still there....I cannot tell you how upset I am by the whole matter. It was not worth living a far from negligible life...only to have a blundering ass reinvent it."
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Ouch!
This was at the time VN was beginning to write Look at the Harlequins!, and VN began to think of his mortality, so another proof of his not wanting anyone to read his unfinished work is to be had here. He attached a note to his manuscript that if he died before fininshing the book, polishing etc, it was to be destroyed!
 
Pontalba,
Great find!
I noticed especially that they used an unfriendly quote from his unfriendly biographer, Andrew Field, who suggested that VN's interest in butterflies, instead of being genuine, was just an elaborate image-oriented pose. No wonder they weren't friends anymore!
Peder
 
Peder
That appears to be a typical but mild occurance/confrontation between Field and Nabokov.
The public is very fortunate that Brian Boyd wrote such an interesting and comprehensive bio of VN, and refuted much of what Field claimed. And no one should think that Boyd did not do digging of his own. He did but maintained respect for his subject, which apparently Field did not.
 
One can only imagine how the VNs would have reacted to this:

Hoping to share his insight with nonscientists, Mr. Sokolenko undertook the project that eventually became “The Nabokov Code.”
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NYT article 7/25/06

You know SIL I wonder too whether they would have been happy with this approach. But I have to think that as Sokolenko is drawing the parallel between art and science, it would have been ok with them.
Here is a quote from the NYT article.
“When you do what Nabokov did, when you shift your focus from entomology to literature, you hold onto all the methods and research tools that you’ve been using for years,” Mr. Sokolenko said in an interview just before the exhibition opened on July 3. “I think that his painstaking attention to detail could only have come from his profession, from what he was doing in entomology.”
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St. Petersburg Exhibition Shows Nabokov Under (and Behind) a Microcope.
by Alexander Osipovich
 
I'm quite certain that the two of them reaized that they were both going to go down in history. My question is: when do you think they knew? From the first? He probably from childhood, I guess, and she from when he informed her of it? :D

Just kidding. I think.

Hey! ds is reading Lolita! Is this wonderful news or what? And Poppy is reading The Corrections! I think I've died and gone to heaven.
 
StillILearn said:
I'm quite certain that the two of them reaized that they were both going to go down in history. My question is: when do you think they knew? From the first? He probably from childhood, I guess, and she from when he informed her of it? :D

Just kidding. I think.

Hey! ds is reading Lolita! Is this wonderful news or what? And Poppy is reading The Corrections! I think I've died and gone to heaven.
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SIL,
D'ya think maybe she knew early that he was going to be famous, and that she decided she was going to be the one to make him immortal?! :eek:
Not quite kidding, either, I don't think. :confused:
As for Heaven, you don't actually have to die to go there. It's around here someplace. :rolleyes:

Peder
 
Unless I miss my guess, she is the one that navigated that ship (him) to fame. It took the both of them, without each other none of it would have happened for him/them.
:cool:
The perfect partnership. IMHO
 
The Gift

I have just finished reading Nabokov's The Gift and, having done so, went over to amazon to see what other reader's views of it were. They seem to be unanimous in echoing my own reaction. It is a very difficult novel!

Parts of the book have lyrical beauty typical of Nabokov's finest descriptive writing, and there are wonderful sections that show Fyodor meeting and falling in love with Zina, who has characteristics that sound remarkably like Vera, Nabokov's own one-and-only true love.

However, larger parts of the book concern Fyodor and his obsessive compulsion to write a major literary work and then trying to figure out how to do that. For example, Nabokov describes how Fyodor analyses common metric structures of Russian poetry, with examples, and how they originate in a standard structure of Russian adjectives, and how Fyodor then goes on to compile lists of Russian adjectives. Eventually Fyodor decides to write the biography of Nikolai Chernyshevsky and The Gift gets very opaque. Fyodor researches the pre-Revolutionary social and literary history surrounding Chernyshevsky, and thereby causes a myriad of his own (Fyodor's) critiques of other authors and social critics, from famous to obscure, to pass before our stunned eyes. In structure, Nabokov (the real author, whom we know) is writing the biography of Fyodor (the fictional author) who is writing the biography of Chernyshevski (an historical author and social critic) who was a figure in Russia during the late 19-th century under the Tsars. So there are four layers of authorial commentary that can potentially be found in The Life of Chernyshevski which, once it is completed by Fyodor, is also included in The Gift as a complete section unto itself. So, while Nabokov's own acerb comments can be recognized, it is often difficult to follow who among the other layers is speaking. That makes a glorious feast to try to unravel for a true devotee of Nabokov! But it is almost impossible for me to think of digesting it without an encyclopedia of Russian literary and social history in my other hand.

It is a difficult book to recommend for discussion. But on the other hand, it is the last of the novels that Nabokov wrote in Russian, in 1935-37 before coming to the United States, and it has been called the only one of his Russian novels to rank among the greatest of his novels. In Nabokov's own words, the hero of the book is neither Fyodor nor Zina, but Russian Literature. Aginst such credentials, it seems like a book that any Nabokovian will have to read at some time or other.
Peder
 
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