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Did Nabokov like soccer? ...
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*Marita van der Vyver, a writer and reader, writes about reading*
http://maritareadingspace.blogspot.com/2010/06/did-nabokov-like-soccer.html
Friday, June 11, 2010
Did Nabokov like
soccer?<http://maritareadingspace.blogspot.com/2010/06/did-nabokov-like-soccer.html>
<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_UCFKtnCGkUM/TBKM6IyPEEI/AAAAAAAAAq4/AZ0sqGxoG9E/s1600/bookblog+016.jpg>
What would Vladimir Nabokov have thought of the World Cup? This is the
niggling question at the back of my mind on the opening day of Fifa 2010 in
South Africa.
I recently read Pale Fire, see, in which he wrote:
'I loathe such things as jazz;
The white-hosed moron torturing a black
Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;
Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;
Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;
Brutes, bores...'
And the list goes on.
Does this sound like someone who'd get excited about a soccer game? No, I'm
afraid this makes the great writer sound like an elitist and opinionated old
fart. And just in case you think I'm making the tyical reader's mistake 'of
dotting all the i's with the author's head', as Nabokov himself so succintly
put it, let me remind you that he admitted, in a famous BBC TV interview in
1962, that John Shade, the fictional poet composing this list of loathing in
Pale Fire, 'does borrow some of my opinions'. And to prove his point, he
quoted and endorsed the above passage.
I can understand a Russian-American intellectual detesting bull-fighting or
swimming pools - but jazz? How could the author who produced some of the
greatest American novels of the twentieth century, loath jazz? Enough to
break my jazz-loving little heart.
But apparently the wise man didn't detest all popular past-times. He was
actually good enough in tennis and boxing to earn money teaching both these
sports during his perambulatory young adulthood. Lolita's eponymous heroine
happens to be an excellent tennis player, and a passage in the novel has
been called 'the best description of tennis anywhere' in The New Yorker
magazine. It starts like this: 'She would wait and relax for a bar or two of
white-lined time before going into the act of serving, and often bounce the
ball once or twice, or pawed the ground a little, always at ease, always
rather vague about the score...'
Don't you just love that 'white-lined time'?
Remember, also, that Nabokov's only child, Dmitri, became a professional
racing car driver. True, these are all individual sports, not a universally
popular team sport like soccer - so the jury is still out on Nabokov vs Fifa
2010. If anyone reading this could enlighten me, I'd be really grateful.
Because I adore this opinionated old fart's writing. Every time I read one
of his novels, I'm overawed by what he managed to do with the English
language - which was not even his mother tongue, for crying out loud!
Indeed, what he called his 'private tragedy' - 'that I had to abandon my
natural language, my natural idiom, my rich, infinitely rich and docile
Russian tongue, for a second-rate brand of English' - could probably be
regarded as one of the best things that ever happened to American
literature.
Yes, he was ruthlessly opinionated, not hesitating to demolish his
fellow-American literary contemporaries. He tried to read Saul Bellow's
Herzog, he claimed, but it was so boring that he had to give up. And among
his Russian predecessors, he confidently declared that Tolstoy was the
greatest novelist and Pushkin the greatest poet - adding that this made him
feel like a school master marking papers and that Dostoyevsky would probably
be waiting at his office door, wanting to know why he got such poor results.
This is a fine example of Nabokov's irrepressible humour - the other
important reason why his writing is so irresistible. Yes, he loved showing
off and using complicated words, even inventing his own words, but his
irony, wit and humour always saved him from pretentiousness. Anyway, how can
any fanatic reader resist a book like Pale Fire, a marvellous mixture of
poetry and prose, a campus novel hiding a detective story, a series of
Russian dolls each revealing another literary genre? Pale Fire has been
called 'a Jack-in-the-box, a Fabergé gem, a clockwork toy, a chess problem',
and many other adjectives.
It can also be called, quite simply, a masterpiece. The second canto of the
999-line poem written by the fictional poet John Shade, around which the
whole novel is constructed, begins with 10 unforgettable lines about the
mystery of life and death:
'There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me.
There was the day when I began to doubt
Man's sanity: How could he live without
Knowing for sure what dawn, what death, what doom
Awaited conciousness beyond the tomb?'
Every time I read this, I can forgive Vladimir Nabokov absolutely anything -
including his loathing of jazz - and I actually don't give a damn whether he
liked soccer or not. Viva Vladimir viva!
*Posted by marita **at **10:00
AM*<http://maritareadingspace.blogspot.com/2010/06/did-nabokov-like-soccer.html>
______________________________________________
[image: My Photo] <http://www.blogger.com/profile/01434726298774486117>
Marita van der Vyver I am a South African writer living in France with a
French husband and quite a few children. Reading is a lifelong passion, an
everyday adventure, a quiet addiction and a source of neverending joy. Like
all incurable readers I can't resist the urge to contaminate others, so be
warned...
*View my complete profile*<http://www.blogger.com/profile/01434726298774486117>
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/
http://maritareadingspace.blogspot.com/2010/06/did-nabokov-like-soccer.html
Friday, June 11, 2010
Did Nabokov like
soccer?<http://maritareadingspace.blogspot.com/2010/06/did-nabokov-like-soccer.html>
<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_UCFKtnCGkUM/TBKM6IyPEEI/AAAAAAAAAq4/AZ0sqGxoG9E/s1600/bookblog+016.jpg>
What would Vladimir Nabokov have thought of the World Cup? This is the
niggling question at the back of my mind on the opening day of Fifa 2010 in
South Africa.
I recently read Pale Fire, see, in which he wrote:
'I loathe such things as jazz;
The white-hosed moron torturing a black
Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;
Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;
Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;
Brutes, bores...'
And the list goes on.
Does this sound like someone who'd get excited about a soccer game? No, I'm
afraid this makes the great writer sound like an elitist and opinionated old
fart. And just in case you think I'm making the tyical reader's mistake 'of
dotting all the i's with the author's head', as Nabokov himself so succintly
put it, let me remind you that he admitted, in a famous BBC TV interview in
1962, that John Shade, the fictional poet composing this list of loathing in
Pale Fire, 'does borrow some of my opinions'. And to prove his point, he
quoted and endorsed the above passage.
I can understand a Russian-American intellectual detesting bull-fighting or
swimming pools - but jazz? How could the author who produced some of the
greatest American novels of the twentieth century, loath jazz? Enough to
break my jazz-loving little heart.
But apparently the wise man didn't detest all popular past-times. He was
actually good enough in tennis and boxing to earn money teaching both these
sports during his perambulatory young adulthood. Lolita's eponymous heroine
happens to be an excellent tennis player, and a passage in the novel has
been called 'the best description of tennis anywhere' in The New Yorker
magazine. It starts like this: 'She would wait and relax for a bar or two of
white-lined time before going into the act of serving, and often bounce the
ball once or twice, or pawed the ground a little, always at ease, always
rather vague about the score...'
Don't you just love that 'white-lined time'?
Remember, also, that Nabokov's only child, Dmitri, became a professional
racing car driver. True, these are all individual sports, not a universally
popular team sport like soccer - so the jury is still out on Nabokov vs Fifa
2010. If anyone reading this could enlighten me, I'd be really grateful.
Because I adore this opinionated old fart's writing. Every time I read one
of his novels, I'm overawed by what he managed to do with the English
language - which was not even his mother tongue, for crying out loud!
Indeed, what he called his 'private tragedy' - 'that I had to abandon my
natural language, my natural idiom, my rich, infinitely rich and docile
Russian tongue, for a second-rate brand of English' - could probably be
regarded as one of the best things that ever happened to American
literature.
Yes, he was ruthlessly opinionated, not hesitating to demolish his
fellow-American literary contemporaries. He tried to read Saul Bellow's
Herzog, he claimed, but it was so boring that he had to give up. And among
his Russian predecessors, he confidently declared that Tolstoy was the
greatest novelist and Pushkin the greatest poet - adding that this made him
feel like a school master marking papers and that Dostoyevsky would probably
be waiting at his office door, wanting to know why he got such poor results.
This is a fine example of Nabokov's irrepressible humour - the other
important reason why his writing is so irresistible. Yes, he loved showing
off and using complicated words, even inventing his own words, but his
irony, wit and humour always saved him from pretentiousness. Anyway, how can
any fanatic reader resist a book like Pale Fire, a marvellous mixture of
poetry and prose, a campus novel hiding a detective story, a series of
Russian dolls each revealing another literary genre? Pale Fire has been
called 'a Jack-in-the-box, a Fabergé gem, a clockwork toy, a chess problem',
and many other adjectives.
It can also be called, quite simply, a masterpiece. The second canto of the
999-line poem written by the fictional poet John Shade, around which the
whole novel is constructed, begins with 10 unforgettable lines about the
mystery of life and death:
'There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me.
There was the day when I began to doubt
Man's sanity: How could he live without
Knowing for sure what dawn, what death, what doom
Awaited conciousness beyond the tomb?'
Every time I read this, I can forgive Vladimir Nabokov absolutely anything -
including his loathing of jazz - and I actually don't give a damn whether he
liked soccer or not. Viva Vladimir viva!
*Posted by marita **at **10:00
AM*<http://maritareadingspace.blogspot.com/2010/06/did-nabokov-like-soccer.html>
______________________________________________
[image: My Photo] <http://www.blogger.com/profile/01434726298774486117>
Marita van der Vyver I am a South African writer living in France with a
French husband and quite a few children. Reading is a lifelong passion, an
everyday adventure, a quiet addiction and a source of neverending joy. Like
all incurable readers I can't resist the urge to contaminate others, so be
warned...
*View my complete profile*<http://www.blogger.com/profile/01434726298774486117>
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/