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Fw: Fwd: X-men Xavier + Kinbote
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----- Original Message -----
From: willtato
To: D. Barton Johnson ; D. Barton Johnson
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 7:33 PM
Subject: Fw: Fwd: X-men Xavier + Kinbote
I think the admiration for VN, if that indeed was what the author of X-Men was expressing, definitely flowed one way only.
I'm not an expert either, but my take is that while some of these below mentioned "counter culture" groups might have thought it "hip" to allude to VN or his work, Nabokov himself would have wanted nothing to do with any movements, schools or trends - however marginal or avant garde they may have considered themselves. In Strong Opinions, VN was quite critical of drug taking self proclaimed "radicals", campus demonstrators (I think he referred to them as being mostly ordinary hooligans with a few clever rogues mixed in), and hippies and beatniks, which he also derided in Lolita, Pale Fire and probably other places. He was, after all, rather conservative in the sense of seeing right through Soviet totalitarinism (from long, intense personal experience) while many American 60's "hip" people thought - and some still think - that the only dictatorship was here in the US, not the USSR or Cuba.
VN also observed that a genius the likes of James Joyce would occasionally read tabloid journals, sensationalist low brow stuff, and perhaps, one can infer, some comic books; but only to get a sort of handle on topical and scatological tastes. Joyce, like VN, might then make use of the odd piece of trash here and there in a novel, but he would transform it, weave it into the powerful type of ecstatic prose he is known for. To wit the famous quote: "Nothing is more exhilerating than Philistine exuberance."
If VN was known on mainstream TV and Time mag, it was probably for the red herring effect that the Lolita controversy caused - a superficial allure at best. I don't think he was, or is, "accessible" to more than a relatively small, and serious, literary audience.
again, just my two cents...
----- Original Message -----
From: Donald B. Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 3:13 PM
Subject: Fwd: X-men Xavier + Kinbote
----- Forwarded message from RAT101@aol.com -----
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 01:13:53 EST
From: RAT101@aol.com
well, i have no evidence for what i'm about to speculate, but here goes:
In the early '60s, comic books and their creators were certainly on the edge
of the emerging "counter-culture" --- amongst whose adherents the idea of
blending high culture with low culture -- and of legitimating "low" culture like
comic books, would have been very popular...
The whole concept of the X-men is very counter-culture, a group of "mutant"
teenagers trained by the wheelchair bound but brillant Professor Xavier. Shades
of Herbert Marcuse or C. Wright Mills, of Kinsey, of SDS -- not to mention
the civil rights movement -- because the X-men are "mutants" who are
discriminated against by mainstream society and have to fight for acceptance
through
their brave deeds...definitely a lot of symbolism for the real events going on
in the South, in Vietnam, on college campuses...
The writers of the X-men comic book would stereotypically have been beatnik
intellectuals, smoking pot, involved or at least aware of radical politics, and
readers of controversial writers like Nabokov. Just as Sting and the Police
evoke Humbert Humbert in their song a generation later, the writers of the
X-men may well have read "Pale Fire" and used the name as an allusive inside
joke.
Nabokov in the '60s was a living, controversial, best selling writer not
confined to the universities or the academy. The original paperbacks, as you can
see from their covers, were marketed towards a mass audience; how different
from the Vintage editions of today, with their tasteful and subdued covers that
proclaim, "i am serious literature for a refined reader." Back then, VN was
on mainstream TV, made the cover of TIME magazine, and so would have been very
accessible even to readers of comic books.
----- End forwarded message -----
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well, i have no evidence for what i'm about to speculate, but here goes:
In the early '60s, comic books and their creators were certainly on the edge of the emerging "counter-culture" --- amongst whose adherents the idea of blending high culture with low culture -- and of legitimating "low" culture like comic books, would have been very popular...
The whole concept of the X-men is very counter-culture, a group of "mutant" teenagers trained by the wheelchair bound but brillant Professor Xavier. Shades of Herbert Marcuse or C. Wright Mills, of Kinsey, of SDS -- not to mention the civil rights movement -- because the X-men are "mutants" who are discriminated against by mainstream society and have to fight for acceptance through their brave deeds...definitely a lot of symbolism for the real events going on in the South, in Vietnam, on college campuses...
The writers of the X-men comic book would stereotypically have been beatnik intellectuals, smoking pot, involved or at least aware of radical politics, and readers of controversial writers like Nabokov. Just as Sting and the Police evoke Humbert Humbert in their song a generation later, the writers of the X-men may well have read "Pale Fire" and used the name as an allusive inside joke.
Nabokov in the '60s was a living, controversial, best selling writer not confined to the universities or the academy. The original paperbacks, as you can see from their covers, were marketed towards a mass audience; how different from the Vintage editions of today, with their tasteful and subdued covers that proclaim, "i am serious literature for a refined reader." Back then, VN was on mainstream TV, made the cover of TIME magazine, and so would have been very accessible even to readers of comic books.