Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0005857, Sat, 24 Mar 2001 16:16:29 -0800

Subject
Nabokov & Sonny Rollins!?
Date
Body
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I've just noticed the most extraordinary allusion to VN, in Joe
Goldbeng's
1967 liner notes to a reissue of (the great) jazz saxophonist Sonny
Rollins'
1955 Prestige album, "Worktime":

'It has always been impossible to pigeonhole him in any convenient
category,
because he was always changing and going off in a new direction, almost
under one's eyes, in the manner of a conjuror. In that respect, he
reminds
one of the remark made by Vladimir Nabokov, author of "Lolita":
"Desperate
Russian critics, trying hard to find an influence and to pigeonhole my
own
novels, have once or twice linked me up with Gogol, but when they looked
again I had untied the knots, and the box was empty." In much the same
way,
Rollins resists all attempts at classification.'

Indeed. I wonder what Rollins would think about the comparison? I wonder
whether Goldbeng ever discussed it with him? I wonder what else
Goldbeng
wrote on jazz or anything else for that matter? Kind of ironic, though,
in
the light of VN's rantings about jazz music...


Barbara Wyllie
bwyllie@ssees.ac.uk