Subject
Re: Nabokov and Fitzgerald: (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. NABOKV-L thanks Rodney Welch <RWelch@scjob.sces.org> and
Matthew Bruccoli for the following item which sheds new light on VN's
attitude toward Fitzgerald.
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Rodney Welch writes:
In hopes of contributing something to this on-going discussion, I
consulted an expert -- Matthew Bruccoli, a Fitzgerald expert who was also
Nabokov's student at Cornell, and a friend of Dmitri Nabokov. (He also had
a hand in publishing the Lectures.)
I called him up and told him how Mizener's recollection -- "The
Great Gatsby -- terrible. Tender is the Night -- magnificent!" -- had
kept us scratching our heads.
Bruccoli said Dmitri Nabokov told him that his father once gave
him (Dmitri) an annotated copy of The Great Gatsby, and that if he ever
taught American Literature, it would be one of the books he would teach.
(Bruccoli pointed out that "those idiots at Cornell" kept VN from
teaching the literature of his adopted land.)
"So," Bruccoli said, "you have two completely contradictory
pieces of evidence."
How to resolve them? Did Mizener's memory play tricks on him?
Bruccoli believes that Nabokov simply changed his mind about The
Great Gatsby -- hardly an ordinary event, but not out of character, says
Bruccoli. (According to the Nabokov-Wilson Letters, he changed his mind
about Jane Austen once he discovered Mansfield Park.) Books either rise
or fall on re-readings, and The Great Gatsby simply looked better over
time. For Bruccoli himself, "Tender is the Night gets better all the
time."
I rather gingerly offered my own opinion, which is this:
Nabokov's own literary tastes favored the English Romantics. (And, I now
recall, despised most of what passed for "Realism.") In BB's bio,
Nabokov's suggestions to a young writer were rather telling: he told the
young man he didn't really know his tool, and advised him to pursue
Shelley and Keats, among others. He may also have suggested Hawthorne.
My opinion is that he favored the considerably more florid Tender over
the stripped-down Gatsby.
"I wouldn't describe Gatsby as stripped down," Bruccoli said (and
I wasn't about to argue) "but I see what you're saying. Tender is the
Night is richer." And he noted that Nabokov adored Flaubert and Proust
and Joyce -- than whom few (Nabokov is one) have employed language to
more purely artistic ends.
Bruccoli casually recalled some of Nabokov's well-known strong
opinions -- he thought Faulkner a fraud, could barely contain his
contempt when Thomas Mann's name was uttered, and had no use for Ezra
Pound, either.
Another thing I couldn't resist asking Bruccoli while I had him
on the phone: how true to life was Christopher Plummer's portrayal of VN
in the PBS video? "Lousy. Plummer is a great actor, but he decided to
play Nabokov as a Yiddish comedian." (For what it's worth, I liked it,
but I never knew Nabokov.)
RW
Matthew Bruccoli for the following item which sheds new light on VN's
attitude toward Fitzgerald.
----------------------------------------------
Rodney Welch writes:
In hopes of contributing something to this on-going discussion, I
consulted an expert -- Matthew Bruccoli, a Fitzgerald expert who was also
Nabokov's student at Cornell, and a friend of Dmitri Nabokov. (He also had
a hand in publishing the Lectures.)
I called him up and told him how Mizener's recollection -- "The
Great Gatsby -- terrible. Tender is the Night -- magnificent!" -- had
kept us scratching our heads.
Bruccoli said Dmitri Nabokov told him that his father once gave
him (Dmitri) an annotated copy of The Great Gatsby, and that if he ever
taught American Literature, it would be one of the books he would teach.
(Bruccoli pointed out that "those idiots at Cornell" kept VN from
teaching the literature of his adopted land.)
"So," Bruccoli said, "you have two completely contradictory
pieces of evidence."
How to resolve them? Did Mizener's memory play tricks on him?
Bruccoli believes that Nabokov simply changed his mind about The
Great Gatsby -- hardly an ordinary event, but not out of character, says
Bruccoli. (According to the Nabokov-Wilson Letters, he changed his mind
about Jane Austen once he discovered Mansfield Park.) Books either rise
or fall on re-readings, and The Great Gatsby simply looked better over
time. For Bruccoli himself, "Tender is the Night gets better all the
time."
I rather gingerly offered my own opinion, which is this:
Nabokov's own literary tastes favored the English Romantics. (And, I now
recall, despised most of what passed for "Realism.") In BB's bio,
Nabokov's suggestions to a young writer were rather telling: he told the
young man he didn't really know his tool, and advised him to pursue
Shelley and Keats, among others. He may also have suggested Hawthorne.
My opinion is that he favored the considerably more florid Tender over
the stripped-down Gatsby.
"I wouldn't describe Gatsby as stripped down," Bruccoli said (and
I wasn't about to argue) "but I see what you're saying. Tender is the
Night is richer." And he noted that Nabokov adored Flaubert and Proust
and Joyce -- than whom few (Nabokov is one) have employed language to
more purely artistic ends.
Bruccoli casually recalled some of Nabokov's well-known strong
opinions -- he thought Faulkner a fraud, could barely contain his
contempt when Thomas Mann's name was uttered, and had no use for Ezra
Pound, either.
Another thing I couldn't resist asking Bruccoli while I had him
on the phone: how true to life was Christopher Plummer's portrayal of VN
in the PBS video? "Lousy. Plummer is a great actor, but he decided to
play Nabokov as a Yiddish comedian." (For what it's worth, I liked it,
but I never knew Nabokov.)
RW