Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0004511, Mon, 18 Oct 1999 20:53:40 -0700

Subject
Edmund Morris & Edwin Mullhouse: recommended reading (fwd)
Date
Body
>The eerie similarity of the names Edmund Morris & Edwin Mullhouse brings to
>mind what is probably Millhauser's most perfect work, "Catalogue of
>the Exhibition: The Art of Edmund Moorash," in which a rather
>hair-raising story is told in the form of a museum catalogue -- not only
>a terrific narrative idea but a great parody of the form. It's available
>in the collection _Little Kingdoms_, recently reissued in paperback by
>Vintage

Having just started "Catalogue of the Exhibition," I've already been
bombarded with pretty overt references to the Nabokovian:

"He spent the last fourteen years of his life writing religious tracts in
which he inveighed against the idolatry of art and asserted that Nature
itself is a great painting composed of images that obliquely reveal an unseen
Master."
(Vintage edition, p.182) This refers to "one of the more eccentric artists of
the 1830s," apparently aware of the Nabokovian world he inhabits;

"...forest scenes in which satyrs with very hairy haunches sodomize pale
prebubescent girls..." (invoking the Enchanted Hunters on p. 189)

Thanks for the referral! I can't wait to finish it tomorrow.
-John Glick
Chicago, IL