Subject
[NABOKOV-L] Nabokov and Edmund White: Saturday Review and
"Forgetting Elena"
"Forgetting Elena"
From
Date
Body
A burbling fount of information over a wide span of subjects, James Twiggs, once in a while, lets me into this feast with a special link or article. Today, answering my query about E.White and V.N, he has put me in touch with a lively interview found at: http://www.bookslut.com/features/2007_02_010621.php
I read E.White in translation but, inspite of that distortion, it's hard to imagine how Nabokov influenced his style ( and Proust, for that matter) - as I cannot picture Borges wearing a poncho in Nabokov's playful impersonation. After this initial sample ("Meu Primeiro Europeu") , added to the present interview's warm fun and informality, I am tempted to read on, and correct my views.
Here is part of the interview, dealing with Nabokov's contact and subsequent admiration of Edmund White's novel "Forgetting Elena."
[.....]
My Lives is more chatty and discursive than your previous books, yet it's still focused and full of beautiful sentences. Where do you think the style came from?
I feel like my writing in general has become more relaxed. I have this theory: in feminist writers of the 1920s, such as Virginia Woolf, you always feel this strain that they must write beautifully and perfectly. In the same way, gay writers like me and my generation really had to work overtime to prove that we were real writers. And somebody said to me the other day -- somebody maybe my age -- that what was striking when my writing first came along was that it dealt with sex, but it was very literary, it wasn't pornography. It was kind of "fancy writing," and it also dealt with sex. Whereas gay writing had been either very, very fancy and nonsexual, or sexual and pornographic. And to combine those two was something he felt was sort of new. I think when I first started writing I was very uptight, very eager to show that I could really write the hell out of every sentence. That's a young person's thing, too, probably to do with the marketplace -- trying to establish that you're a real writer. And also my idol was Nabokov, and he could write very well. So I think all those things made me right in a very elaborate, controlled way. And as I've gotten older I've gotten more confidence and I've relaxed more. Which may not be a virtue, I don't know.
I'm curious about the Nabokov thing. He had a blurb for you early on. How did that come about?
I had been an editor of Saturday Review Magazine in 1971. I worshipped Nabokov, so I thought, well why not have a cover story on him? The book he had out then was Transparent Things. And I asked him to write a piece for us on inspiration, and he did. I actually had the temerity to edit it; he was very nice about that. I got William Gass and Joyce Carol Oates and several other people to write little homages to him, and I wrote one. And then I sent Lord Armstrong-Jones, who was married to Princess Anne, to photograph him*. Everyone said, "Oh no, send Cartier-Bresson." But I said he'd had enough of artists, he was more interested in aristocrats. I could feel that in my bones. And I was right! Jones and Nabokov spent a week together, and Nabokov was quite a clown. He pretended to be Borges, and he pretended to be all these things.
How do you pretend to be Borges?
He put on a poncho and blind glasses.
Oh no!
Yes, it was very hammy and funny. So then, soon after that, my first novel to be published, Forgetting Elena, came out. And I sent it to him, and he sent me a charming letter. Two lines: "Dear Mr. White, My wife and I both enjoyed your book very much. Everything is teetering on the edge of everything." And the first line was: "This is not for publication." So I had this fan letter from Nabokov, but I couldn't say anything. But then, maybe three years later, 1976, Gerald Clarke, who eventually wrote the biography of Truman Capote, was doing a piece on Nabokov at the Montreaux Palace Hotel. He finally got fed up of Nabokov's hyper-anal control of everything. You had to submit the questions and [Nabokov] wrote out his answers and put them in the box in the morning. So Clarke blurted out a question like: "Who are your favorite writers?" And Nabokov said, "Edmund White, he wrote Forgetting Elena." And so Gerald Clarke put all that down, even though he wasn't supposed to, because it wasn't controlled by "the master." Clarke called me up and said, "Will you talk to me about your friendship with Nabokov?" And I said, "Well, I don't really know him. I only talked to him on the phone once when I was doing this issue." And that's the whole story.
If Nabokov is an author you're frequently compared to, the other big one is probably Proust. I have this sense that critics use him as an easy critical shorthand to talk about you. But at the same time, your writing is Proustian. And I'm curious, in the way you conceive your writing and go about your writing, how strongly you feel that pull.I read that book lots of times. I wrote a little biography of Proust. I wrote a paper on the Madame de Sévigné theme in Proust when I was sixteen-years-old in high school. So I've really read him many times.[...]
......................................................................................................
* (JM) It's worth looking into "Ada, or Ardor" for the chapter in which Nabokov mentions Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, its royal loves and losses, including Portugal's "Ines de Castro."
I thought about Ines through Lucette's address at the "Alphonse IV" ( although there are various distinct Alphonse IV in World History). The Portuguese King Afonso IV, had Pedro's, his heir's wife, killed. After he ascended to the throne, Pedro I procclaimed her a Queen, although she'd been long dead ( a curious twist into the "Restoration" theme which has fascinated Nabokov.) Cf. Ada, I, ch.23: ..." collection of the most beautiful and famous short poems in the English language. This tiny one, for example, was composed in tears forty years ago by the Poet Laureate Robert Brown... It is called "Peter and Margaret."
'Here, said the guide, was the field,
There, he said, was the wood.
This is where Peter kneeled,
That's where the Princess stood.
No, the visitor said,
You are the ghost, old guide.
Oats and oaks may be dead,
But she is by my side.'
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I read E.White in translation but, inspite of that distortion, it's hard to imagine how Nabokov influenced his style ( and Proust, for that matter) - as I cannot picture Borges wearing a poncho in Nabokov's playful impersonation. After this initial sample ("Meu Primeiro Europeu") , added to the present interview's warm fun and informality, I am tempted to read on, and correct my views.
Here is part of the interview, dealing with Nabokov's contact and subsequent admiration of Edmund White's novel "Forgetting Elena."
[.....]
My Lives is more chatty and discursive than your previous books, yet it's still focused and full of beautiful sentences. Where do you think the style came from?
I feel like my writing in general has become more relaxed. I have this theory: in feminist writers of the 1920s, such as Virginia Woolf, you always feel this strain that they must write beautifully and perfectly. In the same way, gay writers like me and my generation really had to work overtime to prove that we were real writers. And somebody said to me the other day -- somebody maybe my age -- that what was striking when my writing first came along was that it dealt with sex, but it was very literary, it wasn't pornography. It was kind of "fancy writing," and it also dealt with sex. Whereas gay writing had been either very, very fancy and nonsexual, or sexual and pornographic. And to combine those two was something he felt was sort of new. I think when I first started writing I was very uptight, very eager to show that I could really write the hell out of every sentence. That's a young person's thing, too, probably to do with the marketplace -- trying to establish that you're a real writer. And also my idol was Nabokov, and he could write very well. So I think all those things made me right in a very elaborate, controlled way. And as I've gotten older I've gotten more confidence and I've relaxed more. Which may not be a virtue, I don't know.
I'm curious about the Nabokov thing. He had a blurb for you early on. How did that come about?
I had been an editor of Saturday Review Magazine in 1971. I worshipped Nabokov, so I thought, well why not have a cover story on him? The book he had out then was Transparent Things. And I asked him to write a piece for us on inspiration, and he did. I actually had the temerity to edit it; he was very nice about that. I got William Gass and Joyce Carol Oates and several other people to write little homages to him, and I wrote one. And then I sent Lord Armstrong-Jones, who was married to Princess Anne, to photograph him*. Everyone said, "Oh no, send Cartier-Bresson." But I said he'd had enough of artists, he was more interested in aristocrats. I could feel that in my bones. And I was right! Jones and Nabokov spent a week together, and Nabokov was quite a clown. He pretended to be Borges, and he pretended to be all these things.
How do you pretend to be Borges?
He put on a poncho and blind glasses.
Oh no!
Yes, it was very hammy and funny. So then, soon after that, my first novel to be published, Forgetting Elena, came out. And I sent it to him, and he sent me a charming letter. Two lines: "Dear Mr. White, My wife and I both enjoyed your book very much. Everything is teetering on the edge of everything." And the first line was: "This is not for publication." So I had this fan letter from Nabokov, but I couldn't say anything. But then, maybe three years later, 1976, Gerald Clarke, who eventually wrote the biography of Truman Capote, was doing a piece on Nabokov at the Montreaux Palace Hotel. He finally got fed up of Nabokov's hyper-anal control of everything. You had to submit the questions and [Nabokov] wrote out his answers and put them in the box in the morning. So Clarke blurted out a question like: "Who are your favorite writers?" And Nabokov said, "Edmund White, he wrote Forgetting Elena." And so Gerald Clarke put all that down, even though he wasn't supposed to, because it wasn't controlled by "the master." Clarke called me up and said, "Will you talk to me about your friendship with Nabokov?" And I said, "Well, I don't really know him. I only talked to him on the phone once when I was doing this issue." And that's the whole story.
If Nabokov is an author you're frequently compared to, the other big one is probably Proust. I have this sense that critics use him as an easy critical shorthand to talk about you. But at the same time, your writing is Proustian. And I'm curious, in the way you conceive your writing and go about your writing, how strongly you feel that pull.I read that book lots of times. I wrote a little biography of Proust. I wrote a paper on the Madame de Sévigné theme in Proust when I was sixteen-years-old in high school. So I've really read him many times.[...]
......................................................................................................
* (JM) It's worth looking into "Ada, or Ardor" for the chapter in which Nabokov mentions Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, its royal loves and losses, including Portugal's "Ines de Castro."
I thought about Ines through Lucette's address at the "Alphonse IV" ( although there are various distinct Alphonse IV in World History). The Portuguese King Afonso IV, had Pedro's, his heir's wife, killed. After he ascended to the throne, Pedro I procclaimed her a Queen, although she'd been long dead ( a curious twist into the "Restoration" theme which has fascinated Nabokov.) Cf. Ada, I, ch.23: ..." collection of the most beautiful and famous short poems in the English language. This tiny one, for example, was composed in tears forty years ago by the Poet Laureate Robert Brown... It is called "Peter and Margaret."
'Here, said the guide, was the field,
There, he said, was the wood.
This is where Peter kneeled,
That's where the Princess stood.
No, the visitor said,
You are the ghost, old guide.
Oats and oaks may be dead,
But she is by my side.'
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/