Subject
Re: ``Ada`` to be made into a film (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Susan Elizabeth Sweeney <ssweeney@holycross.edu> -----------------
I enjoyed
Walter Miale's <wmiale@acbm.qc.ca>
mockery of the puff in the London Times. I
couldn't help wondering why if the filmmaker found "the key to Nabokov's
cabinet" over 22 years ago, it took him so long to start making the film.
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Associate Professor of English
Holy Cross College
<<< Donald Barton Johnson <chtodel@humanitas.ucsb.edu> 11/15 2:34p >>>
----
>THE SUNDAY TIMES
>November 14 1999 NEWS REVIEW
>
>The key to the Nabokov cabinet
>
>A few films cry out to be made. Others should never have been essayed and
>ought to be put out of their misery. A plangent instance of the second is The
>Blair Witch Project...
This reviewer obviously was born to put the undeserving out of their misery.
>...Nabokov, the Russian aristocrat who went to Cambridge, lived
>between the wars in Berlin, where his early novels were published, then moved
>to Paris, where he met James Joyce, and finally emigrated to America where he
>held the chair of Russian literature at Cornell University.
Is this Nabokov, or some other rarefied article?
The succ*s du
>scandale of his novel Lolita allowed him to devote himself entirely to
>writing and consolidate his reputation as one of the most glittering
>intellects of the century. He's always seemed to me one of the three great
>writers of English born speaking another tongue; the others are Conrad and
>Koestler.
Isn't this rich?
>A number of top international scriptwriters were commissioned to do a film
>script for Ada (rhyme it with ardour);
or larder
>...His
>solution appealed to Nabokov, who gave him the screen rights.
GAVE him?
>....And what
>precisely is the book's fascination? "It's a sort of enchantment," Michael
>says. "It has a good story line and is quite erotic. I see it as not so much
>an art movie as a good seller."
But not quite up to say, Harriet Marwood, Governess
Though this is undoubtedly good judgment. Imagine if an art movie had been
essayed.
>...."When I
>left Nabokov," says Michael, "my last words to him were per Ada ad astra."
>The old word juggler enjoyed that...
Yes, but what were HIS last words?
I enjoyed
Walter Miale's <wmiale@acbm.qc.ca>
mockery of the puff in the London Times. I
couldn't help wondering why if the filmmaker found "the key to Nabokov's
cabinet" over 22 years ago, it took him so long to start making the film.
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Associate Professor of English
Holy Cross College
<<< Donald Barton Johnson <chtodel@humanitas.ucsb.edu> 11/15 2:34p >>>
----
>THE SUNDAY TIMES
>November 14 1999 NEWS REVIEW
>
>The key to the Nabokov cabinet
>
>A few films cry out to be made. Others should never have been essayed and
>ought to be put out of their misery. A plangent instance of the second is The
>Blair Witch Project...
This reviewer obviously was born to put the undeserving out of their misery.
>...Nabokov, the Russian aristocrat who went to Cambridge, lived
>between the wars in Berlin, where his early novels were published, then moved
>to Paris, where he met James Joyce, and finally emigrated to America where he
>held the chair of Russian literature at Cornell University.
Is this Nabokov, or some other rarefied article?
The succ*s du
>scandale of his novel Lolita allowed him to devote himself entirely to
>writing and consolidate his reputation as one of the most glittering
>intellects of the century. He's always seemed to me one of the three great
>writers of English born speaking another tongue; the others are Conrad and
>Koestler.
Isn't this rich?
>A number of top international scriptwriters were commissioned to do a film
>script for Ada (rhyme it with ardour);
or larder
>...His
>solution appealed to Nabokov, who gave him the screen rights.
GAVE him?
>....And what
>precisely is the book's fascination? "It's a sort of enchantment," Michael
>says. "It has a good story line and is quite erotic. I see it as not so much
>an art movie as a good seller."
But not quite up to say, Harriet Marwood, Governess
Though this is undoubtedly good judgment. Imagine if an art movie had been
essayed.
>...."When I
>left Nabokov," says Michael, "my last words to him were per Ada ad astra."
>The old word juggler enjoyed that...
Yes, but what were HIS last words?