Grey suit, navy-blue vest
There are other combinatorial possibilities in this GQ slideshow, but I like this one the best.
SIGHTING: Humbert Humbert in Sweet Valley High
The return of Sweet Valley High, with some of the characters grown older, prompts thoughts of Humbert Humbert revisiting Mrs. Schiller for this New Yorker blogger:
Somehow the thought of all these glorified young characters getting old puts me in mind of the final chapters of "Lolita," when Humbert visits Lolita (now Dolly) to find her “frankly and hugely pregnant” with a dog like a fat dolphin:
Her pale freckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins and arms had lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. She wore a brown, sleeveless cotton dress and sloppy felt slippers.
It's a scene of horrible and excruciating diminution, made more agonizing by the fact that Humbert sees how sordid her life is—her body is—but loves her anyway. Of course, this isn’t Nabokov we’re talking about.
)Leaning From Las Vegas
- A Continuous Lean's Michael Williams visits town, posts some terrific vintage Kodakromes.
- Weekend Stubble's Paul Collins stumbles on this Wikipedia entry: List of Las Vegas Casinos That Never Opened.
- John D'Agata writes a dark dark dark (but good & sharply observed) thing for The Believer on the town (well worth getting for that alone: lots of sharp Dave Hickey quotes but even better for D'Agata's on the town's fundamental inability to recognize or talk about its many rough patches).
Nabokovilia: Speak, Memorates
An article on Tono Monogatari, in the 2010 January Believer issue, is entitled Speak, Memorates. (Other McSweeney's-connected Speak, Memory
variations include Tom Bissell's Speak, Commentary
and George Saunders's Eat, Memory
.)
variations include Tom Bissell's Speak, Commentary and George Saunders's Eat, Memory.)
SIGHTING: John Shade Sings!
Recording under the pseudonym John Shade (a name he gleaned from a fictional poet in the Vladimir Nabokov novel “Pale Fire’’), Godowsky has released his debut album, “All You Love Is Need.’’(The rest at The Boston Globe.)
The musician's official web site is at http://johnshademusic.com/
Nabokov Poster
A Nabokov poster (for a design class): love the owl & the colors (see the note -- she's fixing the typo):
SIGHTING: God Bless the German Federal Film Fund
A Nabokov movie in the works? Maybe:
Meanwhile, Christine Berg, project manager of the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), told ScreenDaily that only two projects have been funded by the “German spend” incentive programme so far this year. These are Corinna Belz’s painter portrait Gerhard Richter – Ohne Titel and Harald Bergmann’s musings on a film about Vladimir Nabokov, 37 Karteikarten Zu Nabokov.(The rest here.)
Lemony Snicket on Nabokov
Via the Nabokv-L Listserv:
See related Nabokovilia here.
Despite its originality, the series does have a recognisable lineage. “Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey were enormous for me as a child,” Handler says, “and when I started doing this, I definitely kept them in mind.” The self-referentiality of the books can be traced back to his love of Vladimir Nabokov. “I was a Nabokov freak,” Handler says wistfully. “There’s something about the way he writes that drags my brain right in.” He says there is something Nabokovian about Lemony Snicket. “He’s an unreliable narrator, he’s distracted by detail and digression until detail and digression become the point of the thing.” Handler has written adult (“that sounds kind of dirty”) novels under his own name, which exhibit a similar playfulness.(The rest over at The Telegraph)
See related Nabokovilia here.
An Annotated Pale Fire Website
Pale Fire Notes is actually pretty awesome and impressive (despite the self-effacing description):
Being some incomplete and largely irrelevant notes and commentary on Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, first posted pseudonymously to thePynchon-L mailing list June to November 2003. Page references are to the 1989 Random House Vintage edition.
The website can be accessed at http://importantwork.com/text/palefire/index.html
SIGHTINGS: T.C. Boyle Interview & Hipster Puppies
:NW: You made some interesting structural choices with The Women—one was to have one of Wright’s apprentices, Tadashi Sato, narrate the story, and the other was to present the stories of Wright’s love affairs in reverse chronological order, so the reader learns how each of Wright’s love affairs ends before he learns about how it began. Was your point in reversing the chronology that certain patterns repeated so regularly in Wright’s life that the timeline of it begins to seem circular?
TCB: Well you know I’m not allowed to say things like that. But I very much like your interpretation. Sure, it enables me to reflect somewhat on the pattern of not only that love affair but many other love affairs that people have had over time. You know, where you’re obsessed with the lover and want to spend every minute with him or her, and maybe it doesn’t turn out so well and they become the worst person in your life. So at each stage of this novel, we see the horrific harpy in the wings, and then we see her in the light of redemption as it moves on. And furthermore, to use Tadashi Sato and his grandson-in-law in writing this is something I was inspired to do by Nabokov, for instance. It’s just very playful and it allows the reader to reflect on history and versions of history and what’s true and what’s not.
(The rest of the interview is here.)
Also: this Hipster Puppy asks you to be careful (Puppy's hip but can't spell).
Also: this Hipster Puppy asks you to be careful (Puppy's hip but can't spell).
SIGHTING: Hertzberg's "Sparrin' Words" (The New Yorker)
On Obama and style:
He appeared to be in an unusually relaxed, even bouncy mood. He exuded confidence. The speech he delivered was no literary masterpiece (though by State of the Union standards it was downright Nabokovian), but it was a small triumph of tone and subtle theatrics. Despite the grandiosity of the setting—the curlicued proscenium, the massed dignitaries, the absurd aerobics of the endless standing ovations—the President managed to create a surprisingly intimate, almost conversational effect, as if the well of the House were a fireside and he was having a chat.
SIGHTING: Gina Gershon Likes Lolita
Vd.:
What is your favorite book?
One of my all-time favorite books is Lolitaby Nabokov. I just think he’s such an amazing writer. It’s not the favorite because I have about a zillion favorite books. I’ve always liked The Art of Happiness
, Dalai Lama’s book. I think that’s always a good go-to book if you’re feeling depressed. It puts things into perspective.
(The rest at In Search of Gina Gershon.)
And perhaps not unconnected: a bit of Nabopop: In Gershon's Showgirls
, a character is referred to as a "one-day Lolita Pollyanna." I can't remember if it's Gershon ("Cristal Connors") or someone else.
, a character is referred to as a "one-day Lolita Pollyanna." I can't remember if it's Gershon ("Cristal Connors") or someone else.Freud as a Fictional Character
I am quoting La Force about to quote Woods paraphrasing Nabokov:
As James Wood writes in his book How Fiction Works:
Nabokov used to say that he pushed his characters around like serfs or chess pieces—he had no time for metaphorical ignorance and impotence whereby authors like to say, “I don’t know what happened, by my character just got away from same and did his own thing.”
I have to suspect that even Nabokov would have had a hard time pushing Freud around.
(The rest at "Bossing Freud Around: Freud as a Fictional Character.")
Maar Kudos
Michael Maar's Speak, Nabokov
has been getting favorable press:
has been getting favorable press:Maar is a literary sleuth, his method a Holmesian combination of instinct, some intellectual delegation and close reading...
VN Sighting: Anne Hathaway Discusses the White Queen
Ms Hathaway is a Nabokov fan:
Q: Why have his books been enjoyed for generations?
A: In my opinion, what makes a great book is something that is universally specific. I didn’t read the “Alice” books when I was a child. I read them when I was in college. I was really into Nabokov, and apparently, he was really into Lewis Carroll, so I thought it was a good idea.
(The rest at WDW News: "Anne Hathaway Discusses The White Queen, Her Costume, and the Rest of the Cast")
On Sentiment
:Yeah, well. We are all quite sentimental, a word that Nabokov defended. He wrote of Dickens and the death of Little Jo in Bleak House, I will not allow you to describe this as sentimental: people who use that word have no idea what sentiment is...(The rest at Prospect magazine.)
Well Tended
Loves That Bind
In true Rios manner, the list follows alphabetically and contains only women who bear a striking resemblance to literary heartbreakers, beginning with Proust's Albertine, Fitzgerald's Daisy, and on to Nabokov's Lolita.Julian Rios's Loves That Bind
seems a likely candidate into Nabokovilia:
Ada as a Difficult Book
Lawrence Weschler has observed, astutely, that writers tend to move from Romanesque to Gothic. The early work will be thick, solid, even heavy; only with decades of experience does the writer learn to chisel away excess, as the builders of Notre Dame did: to let in the light. In the case ofVladimir Nabokov, however, the converse seems to obtain. Of the major edifices he erected in English, his last, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle(1969), is his most excessive, both in its difficulty and in the pleasures it affords the (re)reader.The rest at The Millions. (Reminds me of the line in Wonder Boys
: "It's that kind of a book. Like Ada, you know, or Gravity's Rainbow. It teaches you how to read it as you go along")
Shrovis-Bishopthorpe Soap
(And of course I realize that one's parodying the other, so it's a little like being all, Hey, R. Kelly's totally doing Aziz Ansari doing R. Kelly! But awesomeness sometimes requires that parody take precedence over what is being parodied.)