Subject
Lolita & pop
Date
Body
EDITORIAL NOTE: My innocent inquiry about Lolita and Freedy Johnston
induced a plethora of responses from well-informed Nabokovians. My thanks
to you all and particularly to Jake Pultorak who provides the information
below. DBJ
____________________________
From: jake pultorak <jake_pultorak@bge.com>
Nabokov seems to appear in
pop music since The Ventures covered "Lolita Ya-Ya", and quite
distinctly since the Police named him in "Don't Stand So Close to
Me" in 1981. Although Sting, the songwriter and an ex-English
prof, can't spell or pronounce Nabokov correctly.
I had read that Bono (don't you love these names?), the lead
singer for the Irish rock band U2, was a chess fanatic. While
listening to a U2 song I heard the lyric "Well you left my heart/
Empty as a vacant lot/ For any spirit to haunt" and was
immediately reminded of VN's "Evening on a Vacant Lot (In Memory
of V.D.N.)". Noting that this appears in _Poems and Problems_, I
wondered if there was any connection; I wrote to a fan/query
address that the band provided, but never heard a response.
After the release of Pete Townshend's (ex-guitarist and creative
element of the English rock band The Who, once referred to as
"The thinking man's rock musician/rock music's thinking man" and
the creator of the multimillion-dollar grossing rock
opera/Broadway show "Tommy") latest rock album "Psychoderelict",
I wrote him a fan letter in which I compared the circularity and
reflexivity of his concept album to Nabokov's _The Gift_.
Surprisingly, he wrote back and said that he too was a Nabokov
fan, and his daughter was an even bigger one, and she thought
that _Pale Fire_ could be the best book ever written. He added
that he would "...duly scurry off to his library to reread
Nabokov" as I had recommended. He is also the author of a short
story collection and was at one point an editor at Faber and
Faber. [Editorial comment: Shades of T.S. Eliot!]
In another related quote, I had read that Walter Becker and
Donald Fagen of Steely Dan originally met and became friends in
college because of shared tastes such as Nabokov's fiction. This
was in the Boston Globe in the summer of 1993, I believe.
induced a plethora of responses from well-informed Nabokovians. My thanks
to you all and particularly to Jake Pultorak who provides the information
below. DBJ
____________________________
From: jake pultorak <jake_pultorak@bge.com>
Nabokov seems to appear in
pop music since The Ventures covered "Lolita Ya-Ya", and quite
distinctly since the Police named him in "Don't Stand So Close to
Me" in 1981. Although Sting, the songwriter and an ex-English
prof, can't spell or pronounce Nabokov correctly.
I had read that Bono (don't you love these names?), the lead
singer for the Irish rock band U2, was a chess fanatic. While
listening to a U2 song I heard the lyric "Well you left my heart/
Empty as a vacant lot/ For any spirit to haunt" and was
immediately reminded of VN's "Evening on a Vacant Lot (In Memory
of V.D.N.)". Noting that this appears in _Poems and Problems_, I
wondered if there was any connection; I wrote to a fan/query
address that the band provided, but never heard a response.
After the release of Pete Townshend's (ex-guitarist and creative
element of the English rock band The Who, once referred to as
"The thinking man's rock musician/rock music's thinking man" and
the creator of the multimillion-dollar grossing rock
opera/Broadway show "Tommy") latest rock album "Psychoderelict",
I wrote him a fan letter in which I compared the circularity and
reflexivity of his concept album to Nabokov's _The Gift_.
Surprisingly, he wrote back and said that he too was a Nabokov
fan, and his daughter was an even bigger one, and she thought
that _Pale Fire_ could be the best book ever written. He added
that he would "...duly scurry off to his library to reread
Nabokov" as I had recommended. He is also the author of a short
story collection and was at one point an editor at Faber and
Faber. [Editorial comment: Shades of T.S. Eliot!]
In another related quote, I had read that Walter Becker and
Donald Fagen of Steely Dan originally met and became friends in
college because of shared tastes such as Nabokov's fiction. This
was in the Boston Globe in the summer of 1993, I believe.