Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0007537, Wed, 5 Feb 2003 08:00:53 -0800

Subject
Reading Suggestions/Digest #4
Date
Body
From: Paul Braffort <paul.braffort@noos.fr>

As a comment to the recent Thomas Bolt's mail, may I point out that Raymond
Queneau was born on February, 21st 1903. A number of events celebrate this
aniversary, particularly in Le Havre, his birthplace. A special issue of
"Europe" will be devoted to him (remember that n791 of this journal, March
1995, edited by Christine Raguet-Bouvard, was devoted to VN). The RQ
issue, to appear soon, will contain a paper of mine, "Les quatre petites
filles", where VN and RQ nymphets are compared. Among other things, I have
found that the two authors have been in (indirect?) contact through Jean
Paulhan (n.r.f.) and Henry Church (Mesures) as early as 1938.

Paul Braffort

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From: Christopher Berg <tentender@peoplepc.com>

Since Queneau and Matthews have come up, it would seem to be time to
mention their friend and colleague in Oulipo ("Ouvrier de Litterature
Potentielle" -- "Workshop of Potential Literature) Georges Perec. Best
read in French, possibly, but "Life: A User's Manual" is an enormous and
satisfying novel (or "novels" as the subtitle indicates), in addition
being a most elaborate Oulipian construction.

Christopher Berg
Paris, France

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Greg Mackinnon <Greg.Mackinnon@btopenworld.com>


As well as Queneau, readers with an interest in Nabokov should have a look
at other 'nouveau roman' writers like Georges Perec (La Vie Mode d'Emploi,
W ou la souvenir d'enfance, Les Choses) and Alain Robbe-Grillet (Les
Gommes, Le Labyrinthe), the latter receiving the rare Nabokov seal of
approval in 'Strong Opinions'. Perec's notion of the novel as game has
obvious parallels with Nabokov's oeuvre. On a more generic note, the
nouveau roman's preoccupation with everyday objects is of interest to the
Nabokovian ; read the opening of 'Transparent Things' for Nabokov's
description of their elusive metaphysical value.

Hope this was helpful,

Greg
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From: David Morris fqmorris@yahoo.com

This list is truly filled with "the greats," but for the undirected reader
it is of little value. It could stand some serious editing, or at least
some categorization, or, since this is the Nabokov list a commentary of
relation to Nabokov.

David Morris

> Jorge Luis Borges
> Samuel Beckett
> Flann O'Brien
> Phillip Roth
> Anthony Burgess
> Kingsley Amis
> Anthony Powell
> Dawn Powell
> Paul Bowles
> Gustave Flaubert
> Charles Baudelaire
Marcel Proust
> Arthur Rimbaud
> Oscar Wilde
> Halldor Laxness
> Edith Wharton
> Henry James
> Marianne Moore
> Michel de Montaigne
> Mark Twain
> Herman Melville
> W. B. Yeats
> Dylan Thomas
> G.K. Chesterton
> Robert Browning
> William Wordsworth
> S.T. Coleridge
> William Blake
> P.B. Shelley
L John Banville
> Benedict Kiely
> Giuseppe di Lampedusa
> Steven Milhauser
> Gore Vidal
> Marguerite Yourcenar
> Robert Frost
> Edward Gibbon
> Emily Dickinson
> Chrtien de Troyes
> Laurence Sterne
> Samuel Johnson
> James Boswell
> Thomas Macaulay
> Jean Racine
> Moliere
> Pierre Corneille
> Sir Thomas Malory
Lord Byron
> John Keats
> G.M. Hopkins
> Robert Graves
> Alfred Tennyson
> W.H. Auden
> V.S. Naipaul
> Evelyn Waugh
> Michael Frayn
> Dante Alighieri
> Franz Kafka
> William Trevor
> Flannery O'Connor
> Joseph Conrad
> Thomas Hardy
> Virginia Woolf
> Italo Calvino
> Frank O'Connor

Jean Stafford
> Italo Svevo
> W.G. Sebald
> Stendhal
> Victor Hugo
> Gabriel Garcia Marquez
> Emile Cioran
> The Bible
> The Holy Qur'an
> The Bhagavad Gita

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From: Susan Elizabeth Sweeney ssweeney@holycross.edu

Speaking of Updike, many might enjoy Nicholas Baker's U and I, a mock
biography of Baker's own readerly relationship with Updike, which mentions
VN here and there.

Susan Elizabeth Sweeney