Chekhov's Mongoose

Chekhov's mongoose does not appear in the index to the Penguin edition of Chekhov: A Life in Letters, so here are all mongoose-related excerpts collected in one place in case anyone is Googling Chekhov and/or mongoose. (Also: there is not nearly enough mongoose in this Atlantic article misleadingly titled Chekhov's Mongoose. You will get way more mongoose below.) You're welcome!

Ah, my angel, if you only knew what sweet animals I've brought back from India with me! Two mongooses, about the size of a  young cat, most cheerful and lively beasts. Their qualities are: courage, curiosity and affection for human beings. They will take on a rattlesnake and always win, they are not afraid of anyone or anything; as for their curiosity, if there are any parcels or bundles in the room they will not leave a single one untied; whenever they meet a new person the first thing they do is wriggle into his pockets to have a look and see what's there. If you leave them alone in a room they start to cry. You really will have to come down from Petersburg to see them. (256)

The mongoose has been ill and nearly died, but he's well again now and back to making mischief. (264)

I send you my best regards, all of you, even the mongoose, who doesn't deserve them. (266)

How is Signore Mongoose? Every day I dread learning of his demise. (271)

What have you decided about the dacha? Is the mongoose still alive? Etc., etc., etc. (273)

I trust you have already obtained the mongoose's harness? Was the little horror at the Natural Scientists' meeting? (278)

Golden mother-of-pearl and filigree-threaded Lika! It is three days now since the mongoose ran away and now he will never come back to us. The mongoose is no more. That's the first thing. (282)

There is nothing to eat, the flies have taken over, there is an appalling miasma emanating from the WC, the mongoose has smashed a jar of preserves, and so on, and so forth. (283)

Come back soon, we're missing you terribly. We have just caught a frog and given it to the mongoose. He ate it. (284)

Last year I brought back with me from the island of Ceylon a male mongoose (defined in Brehm as mungo). The animal is in good health and condition. As I am about to leave Moscow for some considerable time and cannot take him with me, I humbly request the Management [of the Moscow Zoo] to accept the animal from me, and to send for him today or tomorrow. The best method of transporting him would be in a small basket with a lid and a blanket. He is quite tame. I have been feeding him on meat, fish, and eggs. I have the honour to be respectfully yours,
A. Chekhov (294)

"Debtor" in Ecotone's Migration Issue

Ecotone has just published my short story "Debtor" as part of their Migration issue. (My piece prominently features a stolen raccoon puppet.) There is goodness galore in there: Molly Antopol, Jim Shepard, Angela Carter, Luis Alberto Urrea, a gorgeous Magritte-ish cover. Everyone please buy 500 copies!

NaboPop: Nabokov's Pale Fire in Spike Jonze's Her

The Vintage paperback edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is visible just above and to the right of Joaquin Phoenix in this frame of Spike Jonze's new movie Her (screen capture below totally stolen from Zemb.la; thanks to the Nabokv-L forum for the tip):

See also: Nabokov's Ada pops up just behind Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man.

Sighting: Pnin in Best American Stories 2013

Elizabeth Tallent on her story "Wilderness," and on professor types in fiction (as seen in the back matter of 2013's Best American Short Stories): "Maybe it mattered less, but there was also the grain-of-sand/oyster vexation of fictional professors' almost always being assholes, with Pnin as the fantastically lovable exception to the rule. In fiction, professor is predatory, student is prey. This ironclad dyad goes to bed without caring much about the intricacy, anxiety, and comedy of teaching. So there's room" (337).

The same anthology also features Lorrie Moore's "Referential," a tribute/take-off of Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols."

Awesome Nabokov Sighting: "The Leonardo" / Structure as Orbiting Bodies

Nabokov's story viewed as planets orbiting in relation to each other! This neat illustration comes from Jeff Vandermeer's stunning Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction.

Nabokovilia: Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch

Nabokovilia in Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch:

Apart from that, and the door where the blonde had disappeared, the only light came from a lamp which threw a sharp white circle on melted candles, computer cables, empty beer bottles and butane cans, oil pastels boxed and loose, many catalogues raisonnes, books in German and English, including Nabokov's Despair and Heidegger's Being and Time with the cover torn off, sketch books, art books, ashtrays and burnt tinfoil, and a grubby looking pillow where drowsed a gray tabby cat. (574)

Also:

Clearly this Everett ("poor as a churchmouse" -- his phrase) was living off her money, Uncle Welty's money rather, old Europe preying off young America, to use a phrase I'd employed in my Henry James paper in my last semester of school. (463)

Compare to this bit in Nabokov's "On a Book Entitled Lolita":

...an otherwise intelligent reader who flipped through the first part described Lolita as "Old Europe debauching young America," while another saw in it "Young America debauching old Europe."

 Bonus bit: Tartt quoting Nabokov on what she wants from awesome books.

Nabokovilia: Rebecca Makkai's The Borrower

I love love love Makkai's short stories, but somehow never got around to reading her terrific novel, The Borrower, until just now. There is a Nabokov nod right off the bat!

They say I'm the most terrific liar they ever saw in their lives. And that one, old lecher-lepidopterist, gabbling grabber, stirring his vodka-pineapple from the high narrow shelf of N-A-B, let me twist his words. (You can always count on a librarian for a derivative prose style): Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what I envied, what I thought I could fix. Look at this prison of books. (2)

More Nabokovilia:

(Did he have a predecessor? asks Humbert.
No. No, he didn't. I'd never met anyone like him in my life) (6)

Thus Nabokov lived between Gogol and Hemingway, cradled between the Old World and the New; Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser and Thomas Hardy were stacked together not for their chronological proximity but because they all reminded me in some way of dryness... (30)

Possible Nabokovilia! (Echoes of the Quilty/Humbert conversations.)

"I'm Glenn," he said. "I'm the penis."
"I'm sorry?"
"The pianist. For tonight." (37)

"Do you pray?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Do you play. Piano." (39)

Lovely bit echoing Lolita's "I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art":

Here are the pictures, then. Gather around and look close: runaways and borrowers, angels and aurochs and actors, crafty villains and small, scrappy heroes. Now, complain that the girl in front was blocking your view. Squint hard and ask why the artist drew it all wrong." (322)