Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017488, Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:01:42 -0200

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[NABOKOV-L] sighting, 2007 The little black book:Books
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A heavy Cassell Illustrated edition "The Little Black Book", by Laura Price, Jenny Doubt, J.Round and Lucy Daniel (general editor) plus close to two-hundred contributors, offers 1000 of the "most astonishing moments of twentieth-and twenty-first century literature from around the world, laid out decade by decade...both a story of the century's books and a picture of the century through its books".

Lucy Daniel is a reviewer and critic , articles in The Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, Time Out, Mslexia and FT Magazine. Doctoral thesis on the cultural contexts for reading modernism.
( Cf. Cassell book, An Hachette Livre UK Company; 2007 Octopus Publishing Group Ltd.)

It offers four independent categories for the inclusion of an author's name or reference: Key Book, Key Character, Key Passage, Key Event.
V.N. has been mentioned in three.

In 1940-1949, p.298, one of the Key Events is "Vladimir Nabokov arrives in the United States." (the other events mentioned close to this are: "Darkness at Noon exposes Stalin's show trials" "James Jones is present at the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor", "Underground Press Les Editions de Minuit if founded in Paris" and "The Last Tycoon is published by Edmund Wilson.". The entry sports short commentaries by Jad Adams.
It was chosen as "key" because: "After his move to the United States Nabokov wrote in English. With its penetrating depiction of American suburban life, its road trip across the USA through the cheap commercialism of the nation in the halcyon years of the 1950s, in Lolita, Nabokov wrote the Great American Novel. A later Key Event, "Maurice Girodias launches Olympia Press, the avant-garde publisher" mentions "Lolita's" importance to transform the press's reputation (p.379)

A hundred pages later and a decade, in 1950-1959 on p.396/397, as Key Character, we encounter "Lolita" ( a Kubrick movie depiction, with red heart-shaped glasses and a lollypop that illustrates the opposite page - and Lolita even made it as the overall "Book" cover-image). Short commentaries in the box by Kasia Boddy. Inspite of the limited space in this note on "Lolita" ("synonymous with sexual precociousness") Broddy found sufficient scope to mention M.Maar's article on Heniz von Lichberg's 1916 novella and other sensationalist data - "recently challenged by Emily Prager and A.M.Homes", and those who revenged Lolita by "rewriting Nabokov's novel from her point of view".

Almost two-hundred pages more, in 1960-1969 on page 458, we come to, as a Key Book, "Pale Fire". Comments written by Kiki Benzon. Other references to books in its vicinity were R. Yates' "Revolutionary Road", "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin and "Sex and the Single Girl" by Helen Gurley Brown.

That's All, Folks!
JM


PS: The selection of events and books ( quoted above) has been most perplexing! Has any Nabokovian written comments about this "little black book" edition and how can I read the remarks that were made?

I should have added to the December 16, 2008 2:31 PM posting on [NABOKOV-L] Lolita, Dolores Haze,Swinburne, an indication of James Marcus,NY, at online House of Mirth: Odds and ends: Nabokov, Victoria', for the E.Wilson quote and additional lines.

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