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Re: Amis in NY (fwd)
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From: Brad Buchsbaum <brad@petlab.mssm.edu>
I went to hear Martin Amis speak at the NY Public Library. It was a
packed house but for some reason I don't think there were a lot of
learned Nabokovians or even Amis fans in attendance. The lecture
consisted mostly of Amis reading passages from Lolita interspersed with his
own comments--which were as fancy as Humbert Humbert's prose. Add in the
English accent, a persistent studder, a seeming desire to get the
lecture over as fast as possible, (and my bad hearing)--and you have
something that is a bit hard to follow. What I did get was very good.
At the end, when Amis asked if there were any questions (there was
a long silence, a lot of shuffling, Amis fidgeting...), someone finally asked
him whether or not Nabokov was a particular influence on the writing of
"Money". He said that, no, Saul Bellow had been more of an influence
during that period but that Nabokov's prose had been a model for his
earlier novel "Success". He went on to say that young writers are
frequently seduced by Nabokov's "swift, superior style" but that using
Nabokov for a model is very dangerous and "only geniuses need apply".
Brad Buchsbaum
I went to hear Martin Amis speak at the NY Public Library. It was a
packed house but for some reason I don't think there were a lot of
learned Nabokovians or even Amis fans in attendance. The lecture
consisted mostly of Amis reading passages from Lolita interspersed with his
own comments--which were as fancy as Humbert Humbert's prose. Add in the
English accent, a persistent studder, a seeming desire to get the
lecture over as fast as possible, (and my bad hearing)--and you have
something that is a bit hard to follow. What I did get was very good.
At the end, when Amis asked if there were any questions (there was
a long silence, a lot of shuffling, Amis fidgeting...), someone finally asked
him whether or not Nabokov was a particular influence on the writing of
"Money". He said that, no, Saul Bellow had been more of an influence
during that period but that Nabokov's prose had been a model for his
earlier novel "Success". He went on to say that young writers are
frequently seduced by Nabokov's "swift, superior style" but that using
Nabokov for a model is very dangerous and "only geniuses need apply".
Brad Buchsbaum