Subject
Fwd: Re: VN use of term "homosexual" referenced in AB post of
early9.17
early9.17
From
Date
Body
----- Forwarded message from as-brown@comcast.net -----
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:08:48 -0400
From: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
Reply-To: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: VN use of term "homosexual" referenced in AB post of early9.17
To: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
Don,
Thank you for posting my response to the Steve Amond article. I should have
been more careful about what I wished for, though, since I can see that I
should have put about another hour's worth of revision into it. But I see
also that I made a mistake in thinking that it was in the Almond post that I
saw reference to VN's remark about "homosexual" tastes in literature. Dmitri
correctly notes that the off-hand, witty remark, in a private communication
to a friend, comes from one of VN's letters to Edmund Wilson. Almond doesn't
refer to it. Almond makes one remark about gays and Republicans which I
pounce upon near the end of my note. But I believe what DN referred to was a
mention I had made about VN's jest in a post I had written a week or so
earlier. So, I was completely mistaken in thinking that DN had my response
to Almond in mind when he referenced the comment.
Sincere apologies to all,
Andrew Brown
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: "Andrew Brown" <as-brown@comcast.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: VN use of term "homosexual" referenced in AB post of early9.17
> EDNOTE. Andrew, nI am as mystified as you about the prior incomplete
> version you
> mention. Here is your full text.
> ----------------------
>
>
> Quoting Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>:
>
> > Don, and List,
> >
> > I have seen several references, including Dmitri's, below, to the
> > note I wrote several days or nights ago, and yet have not seen
> > printed in its entirety in our List or anywhere else. I'm not sure of
> > the reason for this. Unless it was indeed posted and I somehow
> > deleted it without reading it. I thought it was an adequately
> > literate response to Mr. Steve Almond's article, much of which I
> > found mistaken, incorrect, or simply weird.
> >
> > Is there any reason my response cannot be printed as it was written?
> > It apparently has been seen, at least in bits and pieces, by a number
> > of people. I have taken the liberty of correcting a number of
> > grammatical infelicities, signs that point to a late night
> > composition. Thank you for your consideration, Don.
> >
> > Andrew Brown
> >
> >
> > Mr. Almond manages to capture almost everything one should
> > distrust in Lolita discussions. From 1989 to 1992 I shared Almond's
> > "vague qualification" as editorial assistant and associate editor for
> > a literary journal Witness.
> >
> > For three years or so, I read many hundreds of unsolicited
> > manuscripts, and learned, for one thing, how many people could
> > competently put words into sentences, page after page, without
> > creating a story. And, gloomier news, how many male academics, from
> > the undergraduate level to full professorship, had a powerful
> > interest in comitting to paper chunks of text that I sincerely hoped,
> > for the sake of all concerned, were sexual fantasies and not
> > autobiographical realities, which they seemed to have considered
> > stories. Somehow, the more carefully crafted the descriptions -- very
> > often of children -- the creepier these efforts seemed.
> >
> > Creepiest of all, however, is when the writer extends to the reader
> > the clammy palm of comradeship, in a spirit of "Let's face it, we're
> > all alike." So, as a reader today, the hackles rise when I read that
> > "we secretly identified with Humbert..." Thanks, but no thanks.
> > Lolita will remain my favorite novel but not for any admiration or
> > identification with its protagonist.
> >
> > What makes Mr. Almond's essay an example of this, for starters, is
> > that, even as the single guy trying to get laid that I was some
> > thirty years ago, it was clear that the shortest route towards that
> > goal was not sitting around the bar talking with other guys.
> >
> > In Almond's recollection, it takes a Rita to point out that HH loved
> > Lolita. But this needs qualification. HH's love is death bed
> > confession love. When he is exhausted and ill, his heart thudding and
> > his mind collapsing, then HH has his Telluride moment of awakening .
> > But Nabokov the writer knew, from a structural point of view, that he
> > needed the insights of a contrite Humbert to complete his story.
> > Aside from that, HH is as contrite as anyone waking with a hangover
> > of mortal dimensions who swears then and there never to drink again.
> >
> > It is no mere cavil to prefer that Almond, in adumbrating the plot of
> > Lolita, should say "man drugs child" rather than "man seduces girl."
> > Nor is it mere pedantry to deplore describing VN's "ability to
> > marshall words with elegance and precision" as a "knack." Shadow
> > graphing ducks is a knack, not being able to write like a genius. And
> > when that is the way a writer writes, it is no more surprising to
> > write that way about a "quivering pervert" than it is to write that
> > way about a Pnin, or a Shade, or a Luzhin or a Lolita. Indeed, the
> > boy Humbert was no pervert. VN had the harder task of limning the
> > dreadful evolution of a passionate child to an emotionally stunted,
> > thwarted, morally impotent man.
> >
> > This is what makes the following statement of Mr. Almond's such an
> > unwelcome surprise: "We root for Humbert because ... most of our own
> > wishes are illicit." This is the type of talk one hears from
> > convicts and their defense attorneys, not to mention certain church
> > leaders in both Catholic and Protestant summer camps and youth
> > programs.
> >
> > I will have to ask to be counted out of an admiration society for one
> > who rents girl prostitutes in Europe, who loathes adult women, who is
> > an intellectual snob and failure even at the almost nonexistent level
> > of achieverment set for the artiste manque (a failure analogous to
> > Humbert's failure as a lover). I will be amused, shocked or disgusted
> > by a character whose successes include punching his first wife,
> > twisting a child's arm, and back-handing her in the face as hard as
> > he can. This member of "we" will not root for Humbert's pleasure at
> > making his slave earn her spending money "the hard, nauseaus way,"
> > and then jeering at her sobs when he refuses whatever pathetically
> > small pleasure he promised her in return for sex and, when finally
> > forced to pay, searches for and finds where she has hidden the money
> > and steals it back.
> >
> > In the face of all of this, and more, Almond oddly points out as
> > proof of Humbert's being a "perv," a few sentences of a purely
> > biological nature. This is followed by the statement that "It is our
> > awareness of Humbert's pathology that makes his seduction so
> > powerful." How? The instances recorded above are the reasons why
> > Humbert's actions cannot be regarded in light of a seduction. He is a
> > violent criminal, despite his own bathetic self-sentencing at the end
> > of the book. His 35 years, if in the general population of a federal
> > penitentiary, should his fellow residents be enlightened as to his
> > reasons for being there, would not be 35 days.
> >
> > This is what clarifies the shoddy cloudiness of relativity of
> > statements such as this:"He knows he's doing wrong. We know he's
> > doing wrong. He can't stop himself. And we can't stop ourselves from
> > watching." And so, we are all in this together? No one is really
> > innocent, no one is really guilty? This is erroneous in fact, and
> > philosophically reprehensible.
> >
> > Humbert stopped himself for years before meeting Charlotte Haze and
> > her daughter. Once opportunity knocked, in the form of a relationship
> > of helpless women whom he could exploit, Humbert acted without
> > hesitation. His helplessness came from one source only. He is a
> > fictional creation, and as Nabokov explained, "my characters are
> > galley slaves." They move toward their ends inescapably. The fact
> > that we can't, or at any rate don't, stop ourselves from reading is
> > not from a moral collusion with the protagonist, but the appropriate
> > response to art.
> >
> > Almond, however, needs to have this as something more than the
> > interaction of writer and reader.
> >
> > "Nor, if we are honest, do we look upon Humbert with pure disgust."
> > Oh, yes we do. "In our covert hearts, we root for him because he
> > loves her (in the actions described above, and in the death bed
> > realization that, if one cares to supply alternate endings to
> > fiction, would have been very different had Humbert been suddenly
> > returned to full robust child-molesting good health) "...and because
> > when you come right down to it, most of our wishes are illicit, or
> > feel that way to us."
> >
> > Who does Mr. Almond hang out with? "Most of our wishes are illicit"?
> > Is Almond aware of how many woman read Lolita? I would venture to say
> > that, at this point in the United States, women in general read more
> > fiction than men, and it is possible that more women than men, today,
> > are reading Lolita.
> >
> > "Humbert's crimes...may be of a greater scale than the ones we
> > commit, but the same cauldron of deviance buddles within us." I
> > doubt that this supposional cauldron bubbled for Lolita's author. The
> > final sentence tagging this corrupt paragraph, with its irrelevant
> > political fillip, and it's completely out-of-nowhere notion about
> > hating gay people, is a trite technique to shut down any opposition.
> > It is as much as to say, in advance, that those who disagree with
> > Almond can only be Republican homophobes. As a non homophobic
> > Democrat (or one who tries to vote Democrat on those occasions when
> > they can put forth a candidate who doesn't give an intelligent person
> > the dry heaves), I resent this maneuver.
> >
> > This is long enough. Let me just say that the "true scandal" of
> > Lolita is the way it has served, and may always serve, as what a
> > character in Ulysses said of the play (as distinct from the
> > character) Hamlet. Unable to find it at the moment, I can only
> > paraphrase, I believe John Eglinton, who describes the play as "the
> > happy hunting ground of many a disordered mind." There is no scandal
> > to Lolita, except by those in search of a literary happy hunting
> > ground. But those who seek scandal instead of genius, and hastily
> > resort to the keyboard, risk exposing more about themselves than
> > about the masterwork of 20th century American literature Lolita.
> >
> >
> > Andrew Brown
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: D. Barton Johnson
> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> > Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 6:31 PM
> > Subject: VN use of term "homosexual"
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Nabokov Dmitri
> > To: D. Barton Johnson
> > Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 12:43 PM
> > Subject: [Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: Nabokovian blunders]
> >
> >
> > Dear Don,
> >
> > With regard to Andrew Brown's posting regarding VN's "homosexual"
> > reading tastes, the quote comes from a letter to Edmund Wilson. In
> > response to VN's request for advice concerning what writers to
> > include in his lit course at Cornell, Wilson had, as I recall,
> > proposed Katherine Mansfield. VN, who had no predilection for female
> > authors, was sure enough of his own sexuality to use this jocular
> > locution without a moment's hesitation to express his literary
> > preference. As to twisted interpretations from predictable sources,
> > caveat emptor.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Dmitri
>
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:08:48 -0400
From: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
Reply-To: Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: VN use of term "homosexual" referenced in AB post of early9.17
To: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
Don,
Thank you for posting my response to the Steve Amond article. I should have
been more careful about what I wished for, though, since I can see that I
should have put about another hour's worth of revision into it. But I see
also that I made a mistake in thinking that it was in the Almond post that I
saw reference to VN's remark about "homosexual" tastes in literature. Dmitri
correctly notes that the off-hand, witty remark, in a private communication
to a friend, comes from one of VN's letters to Edmund Wilson. Almond doesn't
refer to it. Almond makes one remark about gays and Republicans which I
pounce upon near the end of my note. But I believe what DN referred to was a
mention I had made about VN's jest in a post I had written a week or so
earlier. So, I was completely mistaken in thinking that DN had my response
to Almond in mind when he referenced the comment.
Sincere apologies to all,
Andrew Brown
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: "Andrew Brown" <as-brown@comcast.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: VN use of term "homosexual" referenced in AB post of early9.17
> EDNOTE. Andrew, nI am as mystified as you about the prior incomplete
> version you
> mention. Here is your full text.
> ----------------------
>
>
> Quoting Andrew Brown <as-brown@comcast.net>:
>
> > Don, and List,
> >
> > I have seen several references, including Dmitri's, below, to the
> > note I wrote several days or nights ago, and yet have not seen
> > printed in its entirety in our List or anywhere else. I'm not sure of
> > the reason for this. Unless it was indeed posted and I somehow
> > deleted it without reading it. I thought it was an adequately
> > literate response to Mr. Steve Almond's article, much of which I
> > found mistaken, incorrect, or simply weird.
> >
> > Is there any reason my response cannot be printed as it was written?
> > It apparently has been seen, at least in bits and pieces, by a number
> > of people. I have taken the liberty of correcting a number of
> > grammatical infelicities, signs that point to a late night
> > composition. Thank you for your consideration, Don.
> >
> > Andrew Brown
> >
> >
> > Mr. Almond manages to capture almost everything one should
> > distrust in Lolita discussions. From 1989 to 1992 I shared Almond's
> > "vague qualification" as editorial assistant and associate editor for
> > a literary journal Witness.
> >
> > For three years or so, I read many hundreds of unsolicited
> > manuscripts, and learned, for one thing, how many people could
> > competently put words into sentences, page after page, without
> > creating a story. And, gloomier news, how many male academics, from
> > the undergraduate level to full professorship, had a powerful
> > interest in comitting to paper chunks of text that I sincerely hoped,
> > for the sake of all concerned, were sexual fantasies and not
> > autobiographical realities, which they seemed to have considered
> > stories. Somehow, the more carefully crafted the descriptions -- very
> > often of children -- the creepier these efforts seemed.
> >
> > Creepiest of all, however, is when the writer extends to the reader
> > the clammy palm of comradeship, in a spirit of "Let's face it, we're
> > all alike." So, as a reader today, the hackles rise when I read that
> > "we secretly identified with Humbert..." Thanks, but no thanks.
> > Lolita will remain my favorite novel but not for any admiration or
> > identification with its protagonist.
> >
> > What makes Mr. Almond's essay an example of this, for starters, is
> > that, even as the single guy trying to get laid that I was some
> > thirty years ago, it was clear that the shortest route towards that
> > goal was not sitting around the bar talking with other guys.
> >
> > In Almond's recollection, it takes a Rita to point out that HH loved
> > Lolita. But this needs qualification. HH's love is death bed
> > confession love. When he is exhausted and ill, his heart thudding and
> > his mind collapsing, then HH has his Telluride moment of awakening .
> > But Nabokov the writer knew, from a structural point of view, that he
> > needed the insights of a contrite Humbert to complete his story.
> > Aside from that, HH is as contrite as anyone waking with a hangover
> > of mortal dimensions who swears then and there never to drink again.
> >
> > It is no mere cavil to prefer that Almond, in adumbrating the plot of
> > Lolita, should say "man drugs child" rather than "man seduces girl."
> > Nor is it mere pedantry to deplore describing VN's "ability to
> > marshall words with elegance and precision" as a "knack." Shadow
> > graphing ducks is a knack, not being able to write like a genius. And
> > when that is the way a writer writes, it is no more surprising to
> > write that way about a "quivering pervert" than it is to write that
> > way about a Pnin, or a Shade, or a Luzhin or a Lolita. Indeed, the
> > boy Humbert was no pervert. VN had the harder task of limning the
> > dreadful evolution of a passionate child to an emotionally stunted,
> > thwarted, morally impotent man.
> >
> > This is what makes the following statement of Mr. Almond's such an
> > unwelcome surprise: "We root for Humbert because ... most of our own
> > wishes are illicit." This is the type of talk one hears from
> > convicts and their defense attorneys, not to mention certain church
> > leaders in both Catholic and Protestant summer camps and youth
> > programs.
> >
> > I will have to ask to be counted out of an admiration society for one
> > who rents girl prostitutes in Europe, who loathes adult women, who is
> > an intellectual snob and failure even at the almost nonexistent level
> > of achieverment set for the artiste manque (a failure analogous to
> > Humbert's failure as a lover). I will be amused, shocked or disgusted
> > by a character whose successes include punching his first wife,
> > twisting a child's arm, and back-handing her in the face as hard as
> > he can. This member of "we" will not root for Humbert's pleasure at
> > making his slave earn her spending money "the hard, nauseaus way,"
> > and then jeering at her sobs when he refuses whatever pathetically
> > small pleasure he promised her in return for sex and, when finally
> > forced to pay, searches for and finds where she has hidden the money
> > and steals it back.
> >
> > In the face of all of this, and more, Almond oddly points out as
> > proof of Humbert's being a "perv," a few sentences of a purely
> > biological nature. This is followed by the statement that "It is our
> > awareness of Humbert's pathology that makes his seduction so
> > powerful." How? The instances recorded above are the reasons why
> > Humbert's actions cannot be regarded in light of a seduction. He is a
> > violent criminal, despite his own bathetic self-sentencing at the end
> > of the book. His 35 years, if in the general population of a federal
> > penitentiary, should his fellow residents be enlightened as to his
> > reasons for being there, would not be 35 days.
> >
> > This is what clarifies the shoddy cloudiness of relativity of
> > statements such as this:"He knows he's doing wrong. We know he's
> > doing wrong. He can't stop himself. And we can't stop ourselves from
> > watching." And so, we are all in this together? No one is really
> > innocent, no one is really guilty? This is erroneous in fact, and
> > philosophically reprehensible.
> >
> > Humbert stopped himself for years before meeting Charlotte Haze and
> > her daughter. Once opportunity knocked, in the form of a relationship
> > of helpless women whom he could exploit, Humbert acted without
> > hesitation. His helplessness came from one source only. He is a
> > fictional creation, and as Nabokov explained, "my characters are
> > galley slaves." They move toward their ends inescapably. The fact
> > that we can't, or at any rate don't, stop ourselves from reading is
> > not from a moral collusion with the protagonist, but the appropriate
> > response to art.
> >
> > Almond, however, needs to have this as something more than the
> > interaction of writer and reader.
> >
> > "Nor, if we are honest, do we look upon Humbert with pure disgust."
> > Oh, yes we do. "In our covert hearts, we root for him because he
> > loves her (in the actions described above, and in the death bed
> > realization that, if one cares to supply alternate endings to
> > fiction, would have been very different had Humbert been suddenly
> > returned to full robust child-molesting good health) "...and because
> > when you come right down to it, most of our wishes are illicit, or
> > feel that way to us."
> >
> > Who does Mr. Almond hang out with? "Most of our wishes are illicit"?
> > Is Almond aware of how many woman read Lolita? I would venture to say
> > that, at this point in the United States, women in general read more
> > fiction than men, and it is possible that more women than men, today,
> > are reading Lolita.
> >
> > "Humbert's crimes...may be of a greater scale than the ones we
> > commit, but the same cauldron of deviance buddles within us." I
> > doubt that this supposional cauldron bubbled for Lolita's author. The
> > final sentence tagging this corrupt paragraph, with its irrelevant
> > political fillip, and it's completely out-of-nowhere notion about
> > hating gay people, is a trite technique to shut down any opposition.
> > It is as much as to say, in advance, that those who disagree with
> > Almond can only be Republican homophobes. As a non homophobic
> > Democrat (or one who tries to vote Democrat on those occasions when
> > they can put forth a candidate who doesn't give an intelligent person
> > the dry heaves), I resent this maneuver.
> >
> > This is long enough. Let me just say that the "true scandal" of
> > Lolita is the way it has served, and may always serve, as what a
> > character in Ulysses said of the play (as distinct from the
> > character) Hamlet. Unable to find it at the moment, I can only
> > paraphrase, I believe John Eglinton, who describes the play as "the
> > happy hunting ground of many a disordered mind." There is no scandal
> > to Lolita, except by those in search of a literary happy hunting
> > ground. But those who seek scandal instead of genius, and hastily
> > resort to the keyboard, risk exposing more about themselves than
> > about the masterwork of 20th century American literature Lolita.
> >
> >
> > Andrew Brown
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: D. Barton Johnson
> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> > Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 6:31 PM
> > Subject: VN use of term "homosexual"
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Nabokov Dmitri
> > To: D. Barton Johnson
> > Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 12:43 PM
> > Subject: [Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: Nabokovian blunders]
> >
> >
> > Dear Don,
> >
> > With regard to Andrew Brown's posting regarding VN's "homosexual"
> > reading tastes, the quote comes from a letter to Edmund Wilson. In
> > response to VN's request for advice concerning what writers to
> > include in his lit course at Cornell, Wilson had, as I recall,
> > proposed Katherine Mansfield. VN, who had no predilection for female
> > authors, was sure enough of his own sexuality to use this jocular
> > locution without a moment's hesitation to express his literary
> > preference. As to twisted interpretations from predictable sources,
> > caveat emptor.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Dmitri
>
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----