Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021964, Sun, 28 Aug 2011 16:41:51 +0100

Subject
VN/JJ and Naughty Postcards
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Date
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> Prof. Boyd and I exchanged some off-VN-forum ponders on the possible influence
> of naughty, seaside postcards (a very Brit genre dating back to Donald McGill
> circa 1904*) on a passage in Ulysses. I’ve come across a direct link to
> Nabokov which justifies on-forum mention.
>
> Towards the end of Король, дама, валет (English King, Queen, Knave, translated
> by Dmitri Nabokov), King Dreyer is at the Seaview Hotel in the Baltic Resort
> of Gravitch with Queen Martha and her Knavish lover Franz. Dreyer is window
> shopping and describes several comic postcards with unmistakably McGillesque
> risqué themes.
> VN wrote KQK while sojourning with Véra in the Baltic (1928), and the reported
> postcards are matched by many wonderfully teasing autobiographical incidents
> and allusions in the novel (see, inter alia, Brian Boyd’s VN bios).
>
> My only immediate access to KQK is the audio-book, so I can’t cite
> chapter/verse. The book is hiding in some nearby black hole. I plan further
> explorations, but it seems clear from the compositional dates of Ulysses and
> KQK that both Joyce and Nabokov were more-than-familiar with, and exploited,
> the McGill tradition of nudg-nudge, saucy humour.
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle.
>
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McGill;
> http://www.iwight.com/placestogo/default.asp?ls=rec&recid=1839&opt=


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