Juan Martinez 9/20/12 Juan Martinez 9/20/12

What is this? Where am I?

I've created this site as a temporary catch-all for material that would ordinarily make it into the Fulmerford site, a Vladimir Nabokov appreciation site: the idea is to create a quick place where material can be updated. (Very soon I'll be migrating large chunks of the old site into the blog -- it should make it much easier to navigate, for one thing. We'll see!)

Nabokov-related material can be easily found by clicking on the appropriate label.

There are a number of terrific places to find additional information on Nabokov, chief of which is Zembla. Others include

The Nabokov-L Listserv
The Wikipedia entry for Vladimir Nabokov
The Nabokov Online Journal

Contact Information

If you're trying to get in touch with me, here are some of the easiest ways to do so:

You can e-mail me at fulmerford@gmail.com
You can friend me at http://www.facebook.com/fulmerford
You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/fulmerford
You can see what I'm reading at Goodreads.
My CV is available here.

Best,

Juan

Juan Martinez 9/20/12 Juan Martinez 9/20/12

Nabokovilia in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

From David Mitchell's remarkable Cloud Atlas:

Speak, Memory. No, not a word. My neck moves. Hallelujah. Timothy Langland Cavendish can command his neck and his name has come home. November 7. I recall a yesterday and see a tomorrow. Time, no arrow, no boomerang, but a concertina. Bedsores. How many days have I lain here? Pass. How old is Tim Cavendish? Fifty? Seventy? A hundred? How can you forget your age? (354)

Juan Martinez 8/28/12 Juan Martinez 8/28/12

FYS 100 02 & 06: Obsessed

Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's First-Year Seminars Obsessed, sections 02 & 06 (FYS 100.02 & FYS 100.06):

Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.

Juan Martinez 8/27/12 Juan Martinez 8/27/12

ENG 319.01: Craft of a Genre: Fiction

Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's course Cracked Kettles for Dancing Bears, Craft of a Genre: Fiction (ENG 319.01), taught by professor Juan Martinez:

Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.

Juan Martinez 8/26/12 Juan Martinez 8/26/12

ENG 225.01: English Literature I: the Middle Ages to 1800, Fall 2012, Lebanon Valley College

Hi! Here's the material you'll need for Lebanon Valley College's course Dead or Ecstatic, a Survey of English Literature I: the Middle Ages to 1800 (ENG 225.01):

Remember that you can always contact your professor at martinez@lvc.edu. You can also leave comments below (or on the individual pages linked above) and I'll be happy to answer them there as well.

Juan Martinez 7/1/12 Juan Martinez 7/1/12

Nabokovilia: Cheryl Strayed's Wild

From Cheryl Strayed's Wild:

After I was done talking, Spider said, "I've got a story for you, Cheryl. I think it's along the lines of what you're talking about. I was reading about animals a while back and there was this motherfucking scientist in France back in the thirties or forties or whenever the motherfuck it was and he was trying to make art pictures like the kinds of pictures in serious motherfucking paintings that you see in museums and shit. So the scientist keeps showing the apes these paintings and giving them charcoal pencils to draw with and then then one day one of the apes finally draws something but it's not the art pictures that it draws. What it draws is the bars of its own motherfucking cage. Its own motherfucking cage! Man, that's the truth, ain't it? I can related to that and I bet you can too, sister."

"I can," I said earnestly.

(Explanation below the fold if the Nabokov bit isn't coming immediately to mind)

"As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage."

Vladimir Nabokov, On a Book Entitled Lolita

Juan Martinez 6/25/12 Juan Martinez 6/25/12

Fallen Fallen is the Confectionery

About a block down from the Farmer's Market was this building with its preserved ad and its abandoned entrance to what must have been an office. The ad reads, "Walla Walla Candy Co. / Manufacturers and Jobbers of Confectionery." There was lots of awesome graffiti by the office, some of it revised: "Repent," and "Flee ~~fornication~~ the century Harlots repent," and "Fallen fallen is Babylon." So the place was once a place for candy and then a place for sin, or a place for someone to think about and write his or her opinions about sin. (Rest of the photos below the fold.)

Juan Martinez 6/8/12 Juan Martinez 6/8/12

Nabokovilia: Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot

From Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot:

"Bellovian," Leonard said. "It's extra nice when they change the spelling slightly. Nabokovian already has the v. So does Chekhovian. The Russians have it made. Tolstoyan! That guy was an adjective waiting to happen." (p. 57)

Possible second bit of Nabokovilia (the gesticulating trees echo Signs and Symbols -- relevant passage below the fold):

A three-thirty, instead of showing up for J.V. football practice, Leonard went straight home. A sense of impending doom, of universal malevolence, pursued him the entire way. Tree limbs gesticulated menacingly in his peripheral vision. Telephone lines sagged like pythons between the poles. When he looked up at the sky, however, he was surprised to find that it was cloudless. No storm. Clear weather, the sun pouring down. He decided that there was something wrong with his eyes. (p. 258)
From Nabokov's Signs and Symbols:

...The patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence. He excludes real people from the conspiracy, because he considers himself to be so much more intelligent than other men. Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to each other, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His in- most thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees.

Juan Martinez 6/3/12 Juan Martinez 6/3/12

Nabokovilia: Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty

From Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty:


"Nabokov's Family fled Russia. How could the young Nabokov, sitting innocently and elegantly in a red chair, leafing through a book on butterflies imagine such displacement. Such loss." (p. 7)

Juan Martinez 5/24/12 Juan Martinez 5/24/12

Lorrie Moore does "Signs & Symbols"!

Lorrie Moore's "Referential," her short story appearing in the 28 May 2012 issue of the New Yorker, is a total and awesome tribute to Nabokov's "Signs & Symbols." Moore's The first paragraph follows below. The rest is in the magazine.

For those unfamiliar with "Signs & Symbols": Moore's title is a reference to the protagonist's condition, "referential mania," a where "the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence. He excludes real people from the conspiracy, because he considers himself to be so much more intelligent than other men. Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to each other, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His in- most thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees."

Moore's opening shadows Nabokov's as well: "For the fourth time in as many years, they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to take to a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind. Desires he had none. Man-made objects were to him either hives of evil, vibrant with a malignant activity that he alone could perceive, or gross comforts for which no use could be found in his abstract world. After eliminating a number of articles that might offend him or frighten him (anything in the gadget line, for instance, was taboo), his parents chose a dainty and innocent trifle—a basket with ten different fruit jellies in ten little jars."

The full text of Nabokov's version is a available here. See/hear Mary Gaitskill talking about her love of the novel and reading the whole thing, also in the New Yorker.

(Via the Nabokv-L Listserv.)

Juan Martinez 5/15/12 Juan Martinez 5/15/12

Mystery bag!

Internets, we bought this bag in San Francisco's Chinatown for like 99 cents and it's been one of my favorite carry-alls since:

I've been carrying it around for a while, and it's taken a beating, and I'd very much love to find another one. Any clue as to what it's called or who sells them or anything?

I'm not alone in liking these! Delphine carries it all through her various ruined vacations in Eric Rohmer's terrific The Green Ray, which is apparently streaming until someone puts a stop to it. Here is proof:

Juan Martinez 3/30/12 Juan Martinez 3/30/12

Too Many Blue Shoes!

I own too many blue shoes! Also: you can never own too many blue shoes. But I am stopping at five pairs.

Juan Martinez 3/8/12 Juan Martinez 3/8/12

News: The French Vladimir Nabokov society

The web site for the Chercheurs Enchantés -- the French Vladimir Nabokov society -- is up and running! Here is their web site, and below follows the description of who they are and what their mission is:

This website was created by the members of the French Vladimir Nabokov Society which gathers scholars, artists, translators, writers, and Nabokov enthusiasts.

Along with a presentation of the society and of its members, it includes a biography of Vladimir Nabokov, an extensive bibliography of French criticism on Vladimir Nabokov, a series of links to websites dedicated to Nabokov studies, to his works and his passions such as entomology.

The website also announces its first international conference focusing on the various aspects of Vladimir Nabokov’s relationship with France. This conference will be held in Paris from 30th May to 1st June 2013.
http://www.vladimir-nabokov.org/manifestation-vladimir-nabokov-et-la-france-en

The Chercheurs Enchantés join the International Vladimir Nabokov Society as well as the Nabokov Society of Japan as part of a now well established, and very exciting, group of like-minded scholars exploring all things Nabokov.

Juan Martinez 3/4/12 Juan Martinez 3/4/12

Accidental domokun/anthropologie mashup.

Juan Martinez 2/27/12 Juan Martinez 2/27/12

Someone pinned a shirt to me & covered up my shame!

Juan Martinez 2/23/12 Juan Martinez 2/23/12

Dmitri Nabokov, 1934-2012

Photo from this obituary.

Dmitri Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov's son, passed away today. He was a remarkable man -- funny, tough, ferociously intelligent, a race-car driver and an opera singer and a great steward of his father's work -- and will be very much missed. Below follow some of the more notable reminiscences posted on the Nabokv-L Listserv and elsewhere: