Chort!
October 28, 2020 2:33 PM Subscribe
Where is the butterfly-eater, exuberant and mad in the manner of a ten-year-old naturalist, absorbed in a particle that looks like the world, in the rest of these ossified answers? And what is Véra buying in the supermarket – almonds? Green cheese? --Patricia Lockwood revisits Vladimir Nabokov's work in the LRB
Includes comments on Pale Fire, Speak, Memory, Lolita [Content warnings apply], Pnin and other work, spurred by the publication of a new book, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy.
Bonus: midway through Lockwood notes: After a week of attempting to read Bend Sinister, I realised I had Covid-19, and spent the next three weeks working on a delirious bingo card that attempted to gather all of Nabokov’s themes in one place. I present it to you here for posterity.
Patricia Lockwood previously
Includes comments on Pale Fire, Speak, Memory, Lolita [Content warnings apply], Pnin and other work, spurred by the publication of a new book, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy.
Bonus: midway through Lockwood notes: After a week of attempting to read Bend Sinister, I realised I had Covid-19, and spent the next three weeks working on a delirious bingo card that attempted to gather all of Nabokov’s themes in one place. I present it to you here for posterity.
Patricia Lockwood previously
Renewed my subscription to the LRB this year and I'm delighted that she's now one of their regulars.
posted by mikelynch at 4:28 PM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by mikelynch at 4:28 PM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
I like this! Surprisingly, I like this!
I loved Nabokov (though my experience was limited; I think I had read Lolita and Pale Fire and maybe a few short stories) in my youth until I took a class on him in college, which made me intensely hate him. The instructor (a Nabokov scholar) seemed to have only one of three functions on any given day:
1) To express extreme disappointment that we all had failed to navigate the labyrinthine deceptions that the author had laid for us as readers and had instead fallen into one of his many traps, haha stupid students
2) To voice astounded disbelief that we had not read an obscure Heidegger text in the original and thus had missed out on several rather key (though she didn't explain them) jokes and also the whole point of the novel
3) To ask incredibly cryptic questions without follow-up (such as "what is the geography of time in this book?" or "who is not the protagonist?") and stare blankly at all of us for up to ten forking minutes at a time while we attempted to wrestle with what she could possibly mean by this and why we were too stupid to understand it and dear god when would it end. If pressed for clarification, she would only repeat the original question.
What I didn't realize at the time is that scholars focusing on single authors tend to have distinct personalities (Milton scholars are all sexual predators, Joyce scholars are all drunk, Faulkner scholars are almost equally drunk but are considerably more polite than the Joyceans, Hemingway scholars have all seen some shit and have no sense of humor, etc.) and Nabokov scholars are generally jerks. By which I mean that they seem to assume that everyone knows exactly as much as both them and the author and, when someone doesn't, their impulse is to treat them dismissively. Not a good look for a teacher.
But anyway, this review is refreshingly inclusive; the writer treats herself, Nabokov, and the reader like actual humans with shortcomings and flaws and the like, which Nabokov seemed to so seldom do himself.
(ps I was just joking about Milton scholars I'm sure that some of them are not sexual predators and that the people who study your favorite author in a professional capacity (and also you if you happen to be one of them) are just fine and upstanding individuals with no flaws whatsoever)
posted by lorddimwit at 5:56 PM on October 28, 2020 [20 favorites]
I loved Nabokov (though my experience was limited; I think I had read Lolita and Pale Fire and maybe a few short stories) in my youth until I took a class on him in college, which made me intensely hate him. The instructor (a Nabokov scholar) seemed to have only one of three functions on any given day:
1) To express extreme disappointment that we all had failed to navigate the labyrinthine deceptions that the author had laid for us as readers and had instead fallen into one of his many traps, haha stupid students
2) To voice astounded disbelief that we had not read an obscure Heidegger text in the original and thus had missed out on several rather key (though she didn't explain them) jokes and also the whole point of the novel
3) To ask incredibly cryptic questions without follow-up (such as "what is the geography of time in this book?" or "who is not the protagonist?") and stare blankly at all of us for up to ten forking minutes at a time while we attempted to wrestle with what she could possibly mean by this and why we were too stupid to understand it and dear god when would it end. If pressed for clarification, she would only repeat the original question.
What I didn't realize at the time is that scholars focusing on single authors tend to have distinct personalities (Milton scholars are all sexual predators, Joyce scholars are all drunk, Faulkner scholars are almost equally drunk but are considerably more polite than the Joyceans, Hemingway scholars have all seen some shit and have no sense of humor, etc.) and Nabokov scholars are generally jerks. By which I mean that they seem to assume that everyone knows exactly as much as both them and the author and, when someone doesn't, their impulse is to treat them dismissively. Not a good look for a teacher.
But anyway, this review is refreshingly inclusive; the writer treats herself, Nabokov, and the reader like actual humans with shortcomings and flaws and the like, which Nabokov seemed to so seldom do himself.
(ps I was just joking about Milton scholars I'm sure that some of them are not sexual predators and that the people who study your favorite author in a professional capacity (and also you if you happen to be one of them) are just fine and upstanding individuals with no flaws whatsoever)
posted by lorddimwit at 5:56 PM on October 28, 2020 [20 favorites]
hurf durf butterfly eater
With apologies
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:34 PM on October 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
With apologies
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:34 PM on October 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
She’s just so damn funny.
Her commentary on Bend Sinister allows one to play the “spotting The Fall’s album titles in real life”-game.
posted by hototogisu at 7:45 PM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
Her commentary on Bend Sinister allows one to play the “spotting The Fall’s album titles in real life”-game.
posted by hototogisu at 7:45 PM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
I liked this a lot.
If you like Nabokov and/or smart and undeferential reads of Nabokov I recommend the economist Alexander Gershenkron's review of N's Eugene Onegin.
posted by sy at 6:55 AM on October 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
If you like Nabokov and/or smart and undeferential reads of Nabokov I recommend the economist Alexander Gershenkron's review of N's Eugene Onegin.
posted by sy at 6:55 AM on October 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
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I admit I only ever skimmed most of Nabakov...but that was superb. Thanks for a wondrous post.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 3:26 PM on October 28, 2020 [3 favorites]