Vladimir Nabokov

“Nabokov - Pale Fire and Treo” - photo by Josh DiMauro.

So Josh DiMauro (Paper Bits) has had the notion to in a sense return Nabokov’s Pale Fire to index cards, and in the process create another way to experience the story — as a “networked” book.

[…] I’d like to take Pale Fire (which is sort of about, and definitely revolves around, an autobiographical poem written in pencil on index cards), and make an edition of it with the poem printed both traditionally (in the first section), and also on index cards. These would be spread through the pages of the book, which is ostensibly a criticism of the poem itself (although it isn’t really, and the book should certainly be read to see why).

What makes the idea seductive to me is that you could easily use semacodes to link the cards (and individual notes on the poem’s stanzas in the “commentary” pages) to an online, networked version. I imagine it as being like a blog, with wiki-style comments.

Read more…

Yesterday, BBC2 broadcast a Newsnight program on the story behind Vladimir Nabokov’s last unpublished novel, The Original of Laura. I’m hoping it’ll show up on BBC America or become otherwise accessible.

From “Nabokov’s final literary striptease”:

Nabokov made his wife Vera promise him on his deathbed that the manuscript would go the same way as Bryon’s diaries [i.e., burned].

The book never appeared, and the world was entitled to think that it had read the entire corpus of the dazzling stylist.

But Vera Nabokov never fulfilled her husband’s last wish. She agonised about what to do with the incomplete novel, while it gathered dust in the vaults of a Swiss bank.

She could not bring herself to commit the manuscript to the flames. On her own death, the burden passed to the Nabokovs’ only child, Dmitri.[…]

But it seems he could no more resolve the dilemma of Nabokov’s last book than could his mother.

With the decision to go ahead and publish it, something of a controversy has arisen, with various authors coming down on one side or the other. While I can understand and sympathize with those who want the author’s wish fulfilled, I am jealous of losing any of VVN’s work. Particularly when Dmitri has this to say:

“My father told me what his most important books were. He named Laura as one of them. One doesn’t name a book one intends to destroy.”

Nina Khrushcheva’s new book urges Russians to learn from the West by reading Nabokov. James Marson reports.

In the Moscow Times, via A&LD: “Speak, Nabokov”

This belief in the greatness of the Russian soul, Khrushcheva argues, is simply smoke and mirrors used to excuse the country’s backwardness. Russians prefer to fall back on this dreamy myth rather than take responsibility for their own lives. Rational individualism has never taken hold with Russians, and it is instead external forces such as fate and the state that provide meaning to their lives. Living in an idealized, poetic world — “a childish Russian paradise” — they are unable and unwilling to engage in practical activity.

The Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, Khrushcheva writes, offers a way out of this backward state through the example of his own life and his characters. As a member of a wealthy family, he went into exile after the Revolution. His past and country destroyed, Nabokov was forced to rely on himself and create his own meaning for his life.

April 23rd is shared as a birthday by several people of importance to me, one of whom is of the greatest importance of all. :)

First up, in 1564, a certain William Shakespeare who wrote, amongst other famous works, a sonnet which was read at Denyse’s and my wedding:

CXVI
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
  If this be error and upon me prov'd,
  I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Next up, in 1899, Vladimir Nabokov — my favorite writer. He wrote this:

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.

And finally — Denyse, my amazing wife. Our 10th wedding anniversary is coming up in June, and it feels simultaneously like it went by in a flash and like we’ve been together forever. Happy birthday and much love to you, D!