Subject
Nabokoviana
Date
Body
Over my morning coffee I had occasion to check the spelling "phony"
(or is it "phoney"?) while doing the L.A. Times "Jumble" puzzle. My
_Random House American Heritage Dictionary_ (1970) informed me that either
was possible and illustrated the word with "The very air seemed colored
with phony folklore." (Vladimir Nabokov). This led to some stray thoughts.
For one, if you don't immediate sense this sentence as "Nabokovian," you
should hang up your spurs. Secondly, one wonders
whether VN saw the attribution. It is quite possible,
since he used this dictionary. See Dmitri Nabokov's essay "On Revisiting
Father's Room: "...an American dictionary with the national eagle on its
olive-brown cover transformed into a magnificent furry hawk moth" (127).
There is also the oddity that VN is cited for the particular word "phony"
since it is perhaps the best translation for "poshlost," a Russian word
that he introduced into English (but which is not in the dictionary).
All this leads to two minor research projects I propose for the idle.
(1) What VN work is the example quote from? (I assumed it was from the
description of the Berlin dwelling of the parents of Luzhin's fiancee and,
failing that, from the story "Conversation Piece." Neither checked out,
but I could have missed it.)
2) The second project is more involved. If any of you own the CD-ROM
version of the _Random House American Heritage Dictionary,_ it should be
easy to run a search for "Vladimir Nabokov" and find out how many times
he is cited and what kinds of words are illustrated by examples from his
work. Please advise me if this catches your fancy.
------------------------------------------
Other urgent matters. Over my pre-prandial drink last evening I read
Melvin Jules Bukiet's "Squeak, Memory" in the recent "humor" issue of
_The Paris Review_ (#136). Mr. Bukiet is the author of a short story
collection, fiction editor of the estimable _Tikkun_, and writing
instructor at Sarah Lawrence. His fictional memoir tells of his chance
encounter with VN in New York during the Watergate summer of 1973. The
hero, an aspiring young writer, tells of his illicit shoe-swap with the
great man. The narrative is filled with VN allusions and patches of
pastiche, but, alas, is not as clever as its title. _Squeak, Memory_, by the
way, would be a marvellous title for a pseudo-Nabokovian re-write of
Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" which VN referred as "Memoirs
from a Mouse Hole."
The same _Paris Review_issue also has a section entitled "The Man in the
Back Row has a Question" in which several humor writers respond to
questions such as "Which writers, past or present, do you think have
succeeded admirably at humor...who have written classics of the genre?"
Only two mentioned VN. Jeffrey Eugenides: "Closer to our own time we
have Joyce, of course, and Nabokov. Pyncheon, Donald Barthelme, Gilbert
Sorrentino,...." (99). More substantive is the reponse of Frederick Tuten
who says: "And it is the riot of language that shapes Nabokov's _Lolita_
into a hilarious, unsentimental modern handbook of heartbreaking,
impossible love. The intellectual clown and teenage guru, both sharing a
sitcom stage the size of America, which for Humbert's delusions and for
its indifferent vulgarities could well be the landscape of Don Quixote's
Spain" (102).
In closing, I (DBJ) would remark that I never fail to be amazed
that so few critics seem to register that Nabokov wrote two comic
masterpieces (_Lo_ & _Pale Fire_) and many of the funniest scenes in
world literature.
D. Barton Johnson Department of Germanic, Slavic and
Semitic Studies Phelps Hall, University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106, Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618
(or is it "phoney"?) while doing the L.A. Times "Jumble" puzzle. My
_Random House American Heritage Dictionary_ (1970) informed me that either
was possible and illustrated the word with "The very air seemed colored
with phony folklore." (Vladimir Nabokov). This led to some stray thoughts.
For one, if you don't immediate sense this sentence as "Nabokovian," you
should hang up your spurs. Secondly, one wonders
whether VN saw the attribution. It is quite possible,
since he used this dictionary. See Dmitri Nabokov's essay "On Revisiting
Father's Room: "...an American dictionary with the national eagle on its
olive-brown cover transformed into a magnificent furry hawk moth" (127).
There is also the oddity that VN is cited for the particular word "phony"
since it is perhaps the best translation for "poshlost," a Russian word
that he introduced into English (but which is not in the dictionary).
All this leads to two minor research projects I propose for the idle.
(1) What VN work is the example quote from? (I assumed it was from the
description of the Berlin dwelling of the parents of Luzhin's fiancee and,
failing that, from the story "Conversation Piece." Neither checked out,
but I could have missed it.)
2) The second project is more involved. If any of you own the CD-ROM
version of the _Random House American Heritage Dictionary,_ it should be
easy to run a search for "Vladimir Nabokov" and find out how many times
he is cited and what kinds of words are illustrated by examples from his
work. Please advise me if this catches your fancy.
------------------------------------------
Other urgent matters. Over my pre-prandial drink last evening I read
Melvin Jules Bukiet's "Squeak, Memory" in the recent "humor" issue of
_The Paris Review_ (#136). Mr. Bukiet is the author of a short story
collection, fiction editor of the estimable _Tikkun_, and writing
instructor at Sarah Lawrence. His fictional memoir tells of his chance
encounter with VN in New York during the Watergate summer of 1973. The
hero, an aspiring young writer, tells of his illicit shoe-swap with the
great man. The narrative is filled with VN allusions and patches of
pastiche, but, alas, is not as clever as its title. _Squeak, Memory_, by the
way, would be a marvellous title for a pseudo-Nabokovian re-write of
Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" which VN referred as "Memoirs
from a Mouse Hole."
The same _Paris Review_issue also has a section entitled "The Man in the
Back Row has a Question" in which several humor writers respond to
questions such as "Which writers, past or present, do you think have
succeeded admirably at humor...who have written classics of the genre?"
Only two mentioned VN. Jeffrey Eugenides: "Closer to our own time we
have Joyce, of course, and Nabokov. Pyncheon, Donald Barthelme, Gilbert
Sorrentino,...." (99). More substantive is the reponse of Frederick Tuten
who says: "And it is the riot of language that shapes Nabokov's _Lolita_
into a hilarious, unsentimental modern handbook of heartbreaking,
impossible love. The intellectual clown and teenage guru, both sharing a
sitcom stage the size of America, which for Humbert's delusions and for
its indifferent vulgarities could well be the landscape of Don Quixote's
Spain" (102).
In closing, I (DBJ) would remark that I never fail to be amazed
that so few critics seem to register that Nabokov wrote two comic
masterpieces (_Lo_ & _Pale Fire_) and many of the funniest scenes in
world literature.
D. Barton Johnson Department of Germanic, Slavic and
Semitic Studies Phelps Hall, University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106, Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618