Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019873, Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:54:22 -0300

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Re: LINKS: Two Early PF Newspaper Items
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Matthew Roth [ to Jansy's: A follower of Robert Frost? So that's what "an oozy footstep behind Frost" means? One must find the context for this quote to get the feel of Nabokov's tease.] ... my impression is that the author of the article interviewed VN himself, so this is probably all the context available. Here's an entertaining VN quip I hadn't seen before:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Av4xAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IOUFAAAAIBAJ&dq=lolita nabokov&pg=6705,2034481

JM: An amusing item [ "...waiting reporters who questioned him about "Lolita" ... "I'm sorry," Nabokov told them, "but there is a mistake here. I didn't write the book. It was written by my father, and he's been put away in a mad-house."]. It suggests that Nabokov, when informally interviewed, would answer with humor - and lie (deceive) accordingly.
Like in Wordsworth's conclusion, after seeing a rainbow in the sky, this must be another case of "The Child is Father to the Man"


Gary Lipon [ to Jansy's "Why a pastiche of Hazel's tragedy, along with other sad tales? Why Hazel, in particular..."] I'm honestly quite surprised, if I understand you correctly, that you don't see allusions to Hazel's story in this sequence? ... The writing here is I think quite remarkable, impressionistic, one vignette eliding into another, dreamlike. Not all of the mappings can be said to fit well, namely 1 & 5, but that's what makes the passage so enchanting.

JM: No! At least, not from this sequence. No.... But, perhaps, through Matt's association to the plot and lines from Mary Shelley's "Matilda," I'll be able to get your point in the future (see, only just now did I notice that "timelessness" should not be interpreted as a synonim of "eternal, atemporal" but, quite simply, as "in disregard of a schedule").

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