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Vladimir Nabokov

steffe,I noticed that you have been reading Oliver Sacks, and I found this reference to him while reading in one of Peder's links that he so kindly posted above:

Oliver Sacks has told me how fascinated he was to learn that as a seven-year-old in the throes of fever Vladimir Nabokov lost his skills as a mathematical prodigy, and found on his recovery that butterflies seemed to have recolonized some of the mental terrain he had formerly dedicated to his concern for, for instance, the seventeenth root of 3529471145760-275132301897342055866171392.
Nabokov himself would have been delighted by Sacks’s work and by his interest. He had already been delighted when in 1949 a team of psychologists drew on his detailed explanation of his synesthesia in his “Portrait of My Mother,” only two months after the memoir’s publication in the New Yorker and years before it became, as planned, Chapter 2 of his autobiography. Before it was called Speak, Memory, the autobiography was entitled Conclusive Evidence, partly because Nabokov, still working at the microscope at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology when he began the project, had conceived it as both an artistic and a scientific challenge, an attempt to recount his life with the maximum art and the maximum precision in retracing the strands of his personality. Indeed Véra Nabokov wrote to one of the coauthors of the paper on synesthesia, objecting to the implication that the metaphors he had chosen to specify the exact colors he associated with each letter of the alphabet—“In the brown group, there are the rich rubbery tone of soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h”—were “a concession to literature. He says that, being a scientist (entomologist), he considers his prose scientific and would have used the same metaphors in a scientific article.”
Since that first 1949 discussion of Nabokov’s synesthesia by psychologists, there has been much more scientific work on the phenomenon, and Nabokov is almost invariably cited both for the artistic and scientific exactness of his report and as a prime example, along with Kandinsky, Scriabin and Hockney, of the association of synesthesia with artistic originality.
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Nabokov's Blues
 
Pnin ...

The book's popularity--due in large part to its New Yorker serialization--was unprecedented in Nabokov's career; Pnin went into a second printing within two weeks of publication. Edmund Wilson attempted to explain the work's success, writing Nabokov that he "may at last have made contact with the great American public--the reviews I have so far seen all say exactly the same thing: this shows that no one is puzzled, they know how they are meant to react." Perhaps surprisingly, Kingsley Amis was appalled by the novel. He wrote: "That this limp, tasteless salad of Joyce, Chaplin, Mary MacCarthy [sic] and of course Nabokov (who should know better) has had delighted noises made over it by Edmund Wilson, Randall Jarrell and Graham Greene is a mystery of some dimensions.
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The Life and Works of VN
 
Pale Fire ...

The greatest of invented poets: Pale Fire, 1962
Nabokov called Pale Fire's form "specifically, if not generically, new." "Generically," perhaps, it is his answer to the verse novel, exemplified by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Specifically, it is centered on the title poem, "Pale Fire," a 999-line verse, divided into four cantos, by the fictional deceased poet John Shade--in Nabokov's estimation, "by far the greatest of invented poets." The poem is introduced by the supposedly mad critic Charles Kinbote, in a foreword written in the spirit of Nabokov's own explanatory forewords. Kinbote also provides a 300-page "commentary" and index, which together recount the history of Zembla, "a distant Northern land."


NYPL, Berg Collection Nabokov composed a number of his later works (here, Pale Fire) on index cards. As he observed in a 1967 interview: "Since I always have at the very start a curiously clear preview of the entire novel before me or above me, I find cards especially convenient when not following the logical sequence of chapters but preparing instead this or that passage at any point in the novel and filling in the gaps in no special order."

Nabokov had been turning over various seeds of Pale Fire as early as 1939, but its final form did not crystallize until 1960. When he submitted the poem, originally called "The Brink," to Esquire in 1961, he told the editor Rust Hills that it was "racy and tricky, and unpleasant, and bizarre." (Esquire rejected the piece, as the magazine never published poetry.) The novel was published in April 1962, and by summer it was a best-seller, despite the complexity of the narrative and the fact that, according to Nabokov, "few reviewers realized what it was really about." Reviews were mixed, but Mary McCarthy's encomium in her New Republic review, "A Bolt From the Blue," eclipsed them all: she called it "one of the very great works of art of this century." Pale Fire, too, was nominated for but did not win the National Book Award.
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The greatest of invented poets
 
steffee said:
Pontalba, it's us...

housework.gif


:D :D :D
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What a cute cartoon, I need to find one that shows I can't stay off line enough to finish my book.:D
 
Madeline said:
What a cute cartoon, I need to find one that shows I can't stay off line enough to finish my book.:D
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Hah! Now!, Madeline you have hit the nail squarely upon its little teeny head!! :eek:
 
Madeline said:
What great info on VN, I've started a folder for his bio:)
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There's a real wealth of information in the links above that Peder posted when opening up this thread. Amazing stuff. :D
 
pontalba said:
Hah! Now!, Madeline you have hit the nail squarely upon its little teeny head!! :eek:
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I suspect that if Nabokov himself had had access to the internet, he may have written fewer books. What do you think? Would he have joined fora? And been distracted by them? Most likely he would have had a blog. No? Yes? What do you all think? Knowing VN as well as you now do? (We should go ask Dmitri.) :D
 
LOL SIL! I agree, he'd probably have had a blog. A well-thought out blog, that would have been vetted over and over again before release. One thing I have noticed in reading, or actually skimming and reading sections of Strong Opinions is that Nabokov never, ever spoke "off the cuff". Its made me curious as to exactly why. There are several explanations, but I can't make up my mind yet as to which one I ascribe to. After we read more bios, maybe we can figure it out. :D

Those exerpts you posted were excellently interesting btw.

Now to the tea. See y'all later.

Steffee You've never tasted Corn Bread??? Oy! Mexican Cornbread is the Best! but dont' tell anyone, I use a mix!
 
pontalba]LOL [Its made me curious as to exactly why. There are several explanations, but I can't make up my mind yet as to which one I ascribe to. After we read more bios, maybe we can figure it out. :D
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pontalba, I remember reading (in Vera, I think) that once, after having been interviewed in person, he said he hated how he came off. He thought he sounded (and I'm paraphrasing here): ill-prepared, confused, and/or hesitant' in his responses to fairly simple questions. And he vowed never to do that again. I'll look for the passage. Also, I somewhere got the impression that he was painfully shy, and that Vera did a lioness's ;) job of protecting him in social situations.
 
Hehe, Nabokov having a blog, and posting on a forum. Imagine that!! :D :D

I reckon he would love this thread :D

I'd never even heard of Corn Bread until yesterday, pontalba... but I think I'd use a mix too. I do for everything else :rolleyes: :D
 
Now I'm wondering if perhaps his synesthesia might not have accounted for some of this?

Edit:

Omigosh, steffee, you just have to try some cornbread. Think of what you'd say if somebody told you they'd never tried Yorkshire pudding! (Except that cornbread is actually a healthy food, which Yorkshire pudding cannot possibly be.) :D
 
StillILearn said:
Now I'm wondering if perhaps his synesthesia might not have accounted for some of this?

:D
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It would almost have to IMO. But how, I don't really understand.
 
Peder:

*Urgent testosterone injection required in Nabakov thread*

*Urgent testosterone injection required in Nabakov thread*

*Urgent testosterone injection required in Nabakov thread*
 
StillILearn said:
Now I'm wondering if perhaps his synesthesia might not have accounted for some of this?

Edit:

Omigosh, steffee, you just have to try some cornbread. Think of what you'd say if somebody told you they'd never tried Yorkshire pudding! (Except that cornbread is actually a healthy food, which Yorkshire pudding cannot possibly be.) :D
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Ahh, but cornbread can't possibly be as yummy as Yorkie puds!! :D :D
 
steffee said:
Ahh, but cornbread can't possibly be as yummy as Yorkie puds!! :D :D
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But Yorkie puds will clog your heart
Yorkie puds will make you part
prematurely, with your loved ones.

Cornbread now, will lend you fiber.
Cornbread lets you tour the Tiber,
on your cruise around the world.

Peder!

Wake up!

We need you.

Kenny? You're here. Do something! We can't seem to stop. Quickly, throw us a quote.
 
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