Subject
Re: Transparent Things Group Reading: Chapter I. Hullo (fwd)
Strange novel openings (fwd)
Strange novel openings (fwd)
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---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Friday, July 09, 2004 3:13 PM +0900
From: Sergey Karpukhin <shrewd@irk.ru>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re: Transparent Things Group Reading: Chapter I. Hullo
(fwd) Strange novel openings
For other good examples of strange beginnings, see an article on Louis de
Bernières in the TLS .
[Louis de Bernières specializes in arresting openings. Señor Vivo and the
Coca Lord (1991) begins like this:
"Ever since his young wife had given birth to a cat as an unexpected
consequence of his experiments in sexual alchemy, and ever since his
accidental invention of a novel explosive that confounded Newtonian physics
by losing its force at the precise distance of two metres from the source
of its blast, President Veracruz had thought of himself not only as an
adept but also as an intellectual."]
Still, VN's opening in TT is very much unlike any of those I know, in that
it introduces the narrator (or one of the narrators), who is also a
personage in that very book, addressing the protagonist in a memorable way.
And there is that memorable metaphor of time past, present, and future in
an at first obscure philosophical discussion. And all of it is most
strangely and incompatibly put together in one short chapter.
Re "mnemoptical trick" in Chapter 2, this is what Brian Boyd wrote in
"Nabokov as Storyteller" (Keynote Address, International
Vladimir Nabokov Symposium 2002) http://www.nabokovmuseum.org/PDF/Boyd.pdf:
[In the sentence that follows, what mnemoptical trick causes Hugh to
remember the cherry-red shutters as apple-green? It doesnt matter, its
amusing in itself, the complementary color, the contrasting fruit; but two
pages later the person described here as an aproned valet will be
described slightly more fully as the apple-green-aproned valet...]
Sergey Karpuknin
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 7:10 AM
Subject: Re: Transparent Things Group Reading: Chapter I. Hullo (fwd)
Strange novel openings
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Thursday, July 08, 2004 4:03 PM +1000
From: nitrogen14@australia.edu
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re: Transparent Things Group Reading: Chapter I. Hullo
------------------
>
> The beginning of the novel, as Brian Boyd pointed out on more than one
> occasion, is "the strangest beginning any story ever had".
Hyperbole, surely; although I suppose it depends on what you mean by
'strange'. What about The Mystery of Edwin Drood:
AN ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English Cathedral
tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of its old
Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the
air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is
the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the
Sultan's orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one.
It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace in long
procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten
thousand dancing-girls strew flowers.
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
Date: Friday, July 09, 2004 3:13 PM +0900
From: Sergey Karpukhin <shrewd@irk.ru>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re: Transparent Things Group Reading: Chapter I. Hullo
(fwd) Strange novel openings
For other good examples of strange beginnings, see an article on Louis de
Bernières in the TLS .
[Louis de Bernières specializes in arresting openings. Señor Vivo and the
Coca Lord (1991) begins like this:
"Ever since his young wife had given birth to a cat as an unexpected
consequence of his experiments in sexual alchemy, and ever since his
accidental invention of a novel explosive that confounded Newtonian physics
by losing its force at the precise distance of two metres from the source
of its blast, President Veracruz had thought of himself not only as an
adept but also as an intellectual."]
Still, VN's opening in TT is very much unlike any of those I know, in that
it introduces the narrator (or one of the narrators), who is also a
personage in that very book, addressing the protagonist in a memorable way.
And there is that memorable metaphor of time past, present, and future in
an at first obscure philosophical discussion. And all of it is most
strangely and incompatibly put together in one short chapter.
Re "mnemoptical trick" in Chapter 2, this is what Brian Boyd wrote in
"Nabokov as Storyteller" (Keynote Address, International
Vladimir Nabokov Symposium 2002) http://www.nabokovmuseum.org/PDF/Boyd.pdf:
[In the sentence that follows, what mnemoptical trick causes Hugh to
remember the cherry-red shutters as apple-green? It doesnt matter, its
amusing in itself, the complementary color, the contrasting fruit; but two
pages later the person described here as an aproned valet will be
described slightly more fully as the apple-green-aproned valet...]
Sergey Karpuknin
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 7:10 AM
Subject: Re: Transparent Things Group Reading: Chapter I. Hullo (fwd)
Strange novel openings
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Thursday, July 08, 2004 4:03 PM +1000
From: nitrogen14@australia.edu
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re: Transparent Things Group Reading: Chapter I. Hullo
------------------
>
> The beginning of the novel, as Brian Boyd pointed out on more than one
> occasion, is "the strangest beginning any story ever had".
Hyperbole, surely; although I suppose it depends on what you mean by
'strange'. What about The Mystery of Edwin Drood:
AN ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English Cathedral
tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of its old
Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the
air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is
the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the
Sultan's orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one.
It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace in long
procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten
thousand dancing-girls strew flowers.
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L