Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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.
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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.
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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.)






Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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.
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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.)
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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:

Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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.
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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.
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

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:
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Introduction to Creative Writing (ENGL 150-B), Whitman College, Spring 2012

Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

VN Sighting in J. Winterson Memoir

Jeanette Winterson's memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? offers up a funny, incisive chapter, "English Literature A-Z," where Nabokov appears throughout. (She is not a fan.) Favorite bit appears after the fold:

I had two English teachers. The main one was a sexy wildman who eventually married one of our classmates when she managed to turn eighteen. He said that Nabokov was truly great and that one day I would understand that. "He hates women," I said, not realizing that this was the beginning of my feminism. 
"He hates what women become," said the wildman. "That's different. He loves women  until they become what they become." 
And then we had an argument about Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch, and the revolting Rosamund, whom all the men prefer, presumably because she hasn't become what women become... 
The argument led nowhere and I went trampolining with a couple of girls who weren't worried about Dorothea Brooke or Lolita. They just liked trampolining. (122-3)
Read More