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RES: [NABOKV-L] SAD NEWS: N-L Contributor Stan Kelly-Bootle
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Brian Boyd: If “We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen,” we would prefer to have known Stan even better while we had the chance, now we know what rich lives he was leading in so many spheres beyond the Nabokovian one he brightened up so much.
David Powelstock: This is so shocking and sad to hear. I knew SKB exclusively through this list--as often happens, I had no idea what wonders his life and mind worked beyond my one channel of contact with him. But he really has been one of the most stimulating and generous contributors to the list. I am reminded very much of the poignant paradox that informs so much of VN's own view of mortality: how can it be that this frail mortal coil can contain such multitudes, such an infinity of consciousness and imagination? Stan will be greatly missed!
Jansy Mello: David, your message about SKB touched me in particular. It expressed the shock most of us felt with the belated, but still sudden news of Stan’s death, and your wonder at SKB’s genius. Brian Boyd selected a wry VN quote related to this aspect. However, I confess that I find it hard to imagine Stan tending a couple of steaming hot-dogs on the side of his participation in the VN-L. I prefer to consider that his spurts of participation, always amusing and widely informative, are part of his unaffected, alert and compassionate presence (real and virtual) as a polymath genius- as John Chettoe aptly summarized.
The new reading of this VN quote, though, also left me a bit uneasy: was VN such a snob about the standing of art and artists? It always struck me how, being so opposite to generalizations that miss out the “divine details,” the words “artist” “scientist” “scholar” are so easily and indiscriminately brought up to refer to someone’s abilities: why not individualize the artist or the scientist amidst their generic “crowds”?
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Inside the Belka productions programme of the play based on three Nabokov short-stories (“A Dashing Fellow”), news about a celebratory Russian Art Week in London that might be of interest to some Nablers: From May 30th-June 6th 2014 there will be a “Celebration of the UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014”. Download on www.russianartweek.co.uk for more information. Or read www.russianartandculture.com <http://www.russianartandculture.com> .
In another posting I’ll add a selection of items found in the internet about VN’s theatrical adaptation “A Dashing Fellow” (performed at the New Diorama Thetre) and my own view of this quite Russian side of VN there presented. The word “American writer” never crops up in the folder: ”His first novel written in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, was published in 1941, and his best known novel, Lolita, brought him worldwide fame in 1955.”
Query: Can anyone inform me about Gainsbourg’s Nabokovian “Histoire de Melody Nelson”? (I understood it was a result of Serge Gainsbourg’s proposed and veoed musical of Lolita).
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David Powelstock: This is so shocking and sad to hear. I knew SKB exclusively through this list--as often happens, I had no idea what wonders his life and mind worked beyond my one channel of contact with him. But he really has been one of the most stimulating and generous contributors to the list. I am reminded very much of the poignant paradox that informs so much of VN's own view of mortality: how can it be that this frail mortal coil can contain such multitudes, such an infinity of consciousness and imagination? Stan will be greatly missed!
Jansy Mello: David, your message about SKB touched me in particular. It expressed the shock most of us felt with the belated, but still sudden news of Stan’s death, and your wonder at SKB’s genius. Brian Boyd selected a wry VN quote related to this aspect. However, I confess that I find it hard to imagine Stan tending a couple of steaming hot-dogs on the side of his participation in the VN-L. I prefer to consider that his spurts of participation, always amusing and widely informative, are part of his unaffected, alert and compassionate presence (real and virtual) as a polymath genius- as John Chettoe aptly summarized.
The new reading of this VN quote, though, also left me a bit uneasy: was VN such a snob about the standing of art and artists? It always struck me how, being so opposite to generalizations that miss out the “divine details,” the words “artist” “scientist” “scholar” are so easily and indiscriminately brought up to refer to someone’s abilities: why not individualize the artist or the scientist amidst their generic “crowds”?
…………………………………………………………………………….
Inside the Belka productions programme of the play based on three Nabokov short-stories (“A Dashing Fellow”), news about a celebratory Russian Art Week in London that might be of interest to some Nablers: From May 30th-June 6th 2014 there will be a “Celebration of the UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014”. Download on www.russianartweek.co.uk for more information. Or read www.russianartandculture.com <http://www.russianartandculture.com> .
In another posting I’ll add a selection of items found in the internet about VN’s theatrical adaptation “A Dashing Fellow” (performed at the New Diorama Thetre) and my own view of this quite Russian side of VN there presented. The word “American writer” never crops up in the folder: ”His first novel written in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, was published in 1941, and his best known novel, Lolita, brought him worldwide fame in 1955.”
Query: Can anyone inform me about Gainsbourg’s Nabokovian “Histoire de Melody Nelson”? (I understood it was a result of Serge Gainsbourg’s proposed and veoed musical of Lolita).
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/