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Fw: Spielberg's A.I. and Nabokov's _King, Queen, Knave_?
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----- Original Message -----
From: Bouazza, Abdellah
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 2:17 AM
Subject: RE: Spielberg's A.I. and Nabokov's _King, Queen, Knave_?
Re the last sentence of Christensen's article: I am glad that has been pointed out so soon after my posting:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bouazza, Abdellah" <abdellah.bouazza@hp.com>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Monday, December 23, 2002 3:55 AM
Subject: KQKn & Psycho
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (9
lines) -------------------
> Hello,
> On my very first reading of VN's King, Queen, Knave in the '80s I was
struck by Enricht, Franz' landlord, as a prototypical Norman Bates.
Enricht's relationship with his wife being analogous to Norman's with his
mother and the way they create the illusion that she is alive. I don't
believe someone has ever commented on this.
> Genuine writing of genius contains some prophetical seed.
> Kind regards,
>
> Abdellah.
>
-----Original Message-----
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@cox.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 7:11 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Spielberg's A.I. and Nabokov's _King, Queen, Knave_?
----- Original Message -----
From: TurquoizeZ@aol.com
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 4:59 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: klez information
I stumbled upon this interesting connecting of the Spielberg movie, A.I. (which was pretty atrocious) and Nabokov's King, Queen, Knave. I have no idea how old it is or whether its been mentioned here before, but thought I would send it along just in case:
http://63.161.59.30/rantsrambles_current.shtml?essay=123
Liz
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From the Shelves: Did Nabokov's King, Queen, Knave Inspire the Film A.I.?
by Arne Christensen
Although the recent Steven Spielberg/Stanley Kubrick film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence was heralded for its original look at the future, at least some of its vision was presented decades ago in Vladimir Nabokov's second novel, King, Queen, Knave. The book is about the love triangle between an unhappily married couple and the husband's nephew but one of its subplots is a digression on robots. Early on, the husband, Dreyer, who owns a men's department store in Berlin, meets an inventor who has created a revolutionary new substance called "voskin."
Made from "a resilient, colorless product resembling flesh," voskin is used to construct lifelike "automannequins" that are able to walk and mimic human emotions. One of those figures is a small child, whose "very natural, human-like motion" prompts Dreyer to gaze upon it "with soft emotion...as if he were ready to burst into tears of tenderness." A suave, elderly gentleman in a dinner jacket, who walks with a slow, drowsy gait, and a young man dressed for a game of tennis also make appearances.
After hearing rumors of other automannequins, Dreyer and the inventor look at a robot woman made of "gutta-percha," invented by a burgher in his apartment and now on display at Berlin's courthouse. But she can only "close her glass eyes and spread her legs," under the power of "a clockwork device." She is "merely a vulgar doll."
The inventor's figures, though, "move with a stylized grace that no mechanical toy had ever achieved before," and have faces "fashioned with exquisite care." Dreyer promptly buys the patent rights to these astonishing inventions and briefly ponders whether to place them in public ("putting those figures literally into circulation") or sell the patent to another company. When he decides to sell it to an American named Mr. Ritter, Dreyer arranges a demonstration of two automannequins for him.
That demonstration includes a woman who, "gyrating her angular hips," walks across the floor of the inventor's workshop looking "more like a streetwalker than a sleepwalker." She falls off the stage abruptly, and is followed by the elderly automannequin, who tears off his arm while attempting to salute his audience. The subplot ends with the two automannequins broken and Ritter leaves, never to be seen again, while the novel turns to its conclusion.
Written and set in 1928, just a year after Lindbergh's cross-Atlantic flight, King, Queen, Knave's automannequins anticipate A.I. and that movie's inspiration, Brian Aldiss's 1969 story, "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long." The two female robots, one a prostitute and the other an orgasmic robot, predate A.I.'s creation of an entire robot population devoted to serving the sexual desires of humanity. In addition, Dreyer's heartfelt affection for the automannequin baby brings to mind the mother's affection for the robot child, David, in A.I.
Though best known for his emphasis on memory and style and his ability to create fantasias such as Lolita and Pale Fire, Nabokov's visionary talents are revealed in King, Queen, Knave. It's one small proof that fiction is frequently at least as futuristic and prophetic as science fiction.