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Fw: [NABOKOV-L] The Real Life of Sebastian Knight,
Transparent Things, A Russian Beauty TNR reviews
Transparent Things, A Russian Beauty TNR reviews
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THE NEW REPUBLIC: a collection of short-reviews (sent by Jim Twiggs)
1. January 26, 1942: Vladimir Nabokov's THE REAL LIFE OF SEBASTIAN KNIGHT"
The review offers a very superficial overview of "the life of an English novelist... told by his half-brother...with a brilliancy, a delicacy and a grave and exquisitely venomous humor which make it a delight to read." and informs that both boys "share the same father... a Russian officer of the old regime" and that Sebastian's English mother has left her family on an impulse. For the reviewer, the "book follows Sebastian with poetic passion through his childhood in Russia, his education at Oxford, his love-affairs, his literary career. To state that the facts of Sebastian Knight's life seem oddly similar to those of Vladimir Nabokov's, and that it might be possible to conceive of this book as a private individual's expose of his public self, would be simplifying a matter which implies, but scarcely lends itself to, simplification...."
Simplification is the word that describes the entire article...
2. November 18,1972: Joyce Carol Oates reviews Vladimir Nabokov's TRANSPARENT THINGS
Joyce C.Oates begins with "Invitation to a Beheading," desribed as "a fine anti-Kafkan novel in which the good guy was opaque, and the bad guys were transparent things" to contrast this novel with "Transparent Things." For her, Nabokov seems to follow the "oldfashioned view of the writer's proper relation to his characters is that he must know everything about them," even if only a selection of details are mentioned, before she adds: "Nabokov has always taken that Godlike position toward his fictional puppets, and in this short novel-a writer's highspirited vacation after the immense labor of Ada - it becomes his basic theme. His all-knowing narrator, hovering high above the characters and events, remarks on the difficulty of keeping to the narrative surface of things, because things -including people -are like jars filled with their past ('transparent things, through which the past shines!')."
(Yes! Here Joyce C.Oates' sensibility renders. in very few lines, one of the most catching images in TT, without dismissing the complex implications related to them and such "transparent jars." After all, transparencies are beautiful (spirals in a marble and stained-glass windows, for example) and opacity is a menace, but a fundamental right to entertain thoughts about transparencies.)
Joyce C. Oates notes that Nabokov's narrator cannot "report only the present moment," so he risks breaking the tension film that holds him on the surface. The story about a pencil and its past now becomes " a minor Nabokov game of foreshadowing and coincidence, involving a dull publisher's representative, a fantastic German-American author resident in Switzerland, and one of Nabokov's coldblooded, superficial women-like the hero's wife in Beheading."
Joyce considers that in this book narration is the most important component and "it is bejeweled with sharply focused details and acerb comments on life-an amusing evening's monolog by a great writer on a postman's holiday."
3. June 2, 1973: Jonathan Yardley reviews A RUSSIAN BEAUTY AND OTHER STORIES
The reviewer contrasts Jonathan Swift, "described as looking over a copy of the 'Tale of a Tub' and sighing, 'What a genius I had then!'." with most other artists who "tend to look at their youthful works with the more jaundiced eye of a skilled craftsman appraising prentice work." Although he sees Vladimir Nabokov among the latter, he thinks that he "rues his early wares with a difference...He regrets primarily their disappearance into the exile and oblivion of untranslated Russian Emigre periodicals." He informs the readers that the present collection carries thirteen of "Nabokov's and the century's 20's and 30's best stories." and mentions two pieces, "Ultima Thule" and "Solus Rex," in particular, works "which he was later to transmogrify into that complex marvel 'Pale Fire"[...] Another "curious piece, 'The Circle,' "might be called a proletarian view of 'The Gift'."
In Yardley's quick outline we learn that "the other stories deal especially with art, infidelity and mental aberrations." The reviewer thinks that, compared with his novels "these are mere calisthenics, perhaps; but remember the Russian gymnasts before you disparage mere calisthenics."
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
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1. January 26, 1942: Vladimir Nabokov's THE REAL LIFE OF SEBASTIAN KNIGHT"
The review offers a very superficial overview of "the life of an English novelist... told by his half-brother...with a brilliancy, a delicacy and a grave and exquisitely venomous humor which make it a delight to read." and informs that both boys "share the same father... a Russian officer of the old regime" and that Sebastian's English mother has left her family on an impulse. For the reviewer, the "book follows Sebastian with poetic passion through his childhood in Russia, his education at Oxford, his love-affairs, his literary career. To state that the facts of Sebastian Knight's life seem oddly similar to those of Vladimir Nabokov's, and that it might be possible to conceive of this book as a private individual's expose of his public self, would be simplifying a matter which implies, but scarcely lends itself to, simplification...."
Simplification is the word that describes the entire article...
2. November 18,1972: Joyce Carol Oates reviews Vladimir Nabokov's TRANSPARENT THINGS
Joyce C.Oates begins with "Invitation to a Beheading," desribed as "a fine anti-Kafkan novel in which the good guy was opaque, and the bad guys were transparent things" to contrast this novel with "Transparent Things." For her, Nabokov seems to follow the "oldfashioned view of the writer's proper relation to his characters is that he must know everything about them," even if only a selection of details are mentioned, before she adds: "Nabokov has always taken that Godlike position toward his fictional puppets, and in this short novel-a writer's highspirited vacation after the immense labor of Ada - it becomes his basic theme. His all-knowing narrator, hovering high above the characters and events, remarks on the difficulty of keeping to the narrative surface of things, because things -including people -are like jars filled with their past ('transparent things, through which the past shines!')."
(Yes! Here Joyce C.Oates' sensibility renders. in very few lines, one of the most catching images in TT, without dismissing the complex implications related to them and such "transparent jars." After all, transparencies are beautiful (spirals in a marble and stained-glass windows, for example) and opacity is a menace, but a fundamental right to entertain thoughts about transparencies.)
Joyce C. Oates notes that Nabokov's narrator cannot "report only the present moment," so he risks breaking the tension film that holds him on the surface. The story about a pencil and its past now becomes " a minor Nabokov game of foreshadowing and coincidence, involving a dull publisher's representative, a fantastic German-American author resident in Switzerland, and one of Nabokov's coldblooded, superficial women-like the hero's wife in Beheading."
Joyce considers that in this book narration is the most important component and "it is bejeweled with sharply focused details and acerb comments on life-an amusing evening's monolog by a great writer on a postman's holiday."
3. June 2, 1973: Jonathan Yardley reviews A RUSSIAN BEAUTY AND OTHER STORIES
The reviewer contrasts Jonathan Swift, "described as looking over a copy of the 'Tale of a Tub' and sighing, 'What a genius I had then!'." with most other artists who "tend to look at their youthful works with the more jaundiced eye of a skilled craftsman appraising prentice work." Although he sees Vladimir Nabokov among the latter, he thinks that he "rues his early wares with a difference...He regrets primarily their disappearance into the exile and oblivion of untranslated Russian Emigre periodicals." He informs the readers that the present collection carries thirteen of "Nabokov's and the century's 20's and 30's best stories." and mentions two pieces, "Ultima Thule" and "Solus Rex," in particular, works "which he was later to transmogrify into that complex marvel 'Pale Fire"[...] Another "curious piece, 'The Circle,' "might be called a proletarian view of 'The Gift'."
In Yardley's quick outline we learn that "the other stories deal especially with art, infidelity and mental aberrations." The reviewer thinks that, compared with his novels "these are mere calisthenics, perhaps; but remember the Russian gymnasts before you disparage mere calisthenics."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/