Subject
Nabokov & Hitchcock (fwd)
Date
Body
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For those who don't know this already and have some interest in cross
cultural fertilization, there is an article about Nabokov and Hitchcock on
a website called Images.com.
Here is the URL for the first page of a four page article by James A.
Davidson: <http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue03/features/hitchnab1.htm>. It
is a "compare and contrast" essay in which the two artists are used to
illuminate each other's work.
Sadly, Davidson makes an initial misstep. He writes that: " I have found
Hitchcock's work to, in fact,share a much greater affinity with that of
the Russian émigré writer Vladimir Nabokov, with whom he is not typically
associated since there is no apparent connection (as there is, for
example, between Nabokov and Stanley Kubrick, who made a film version of
Lolita in 1962 based on Nabokov's screenplay). "
As readers of the Selected Letters know, there is indeed a connection, as
Hitchcock attempted to solicit a screenplay from Nabokov in 1964 (VN:
Selected Letters 1940-1977, pages 361-66). Hitchcock's interest in Nabokov
as a potential screenplay collaborator makes explicit one's intuitive
association of two artists who enjoyed playing with viewer/reader
expectations, among other similarities that Davidson elucidates.
D. K. Holm
For those who don't know this already and have some interest in cross
cultural fertilization, there is an article about Nabokov and Hitchcock on
a website called Images.com.
Here is the URL for the first page of a four page article by James A.
Davidson: <http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue03/features/hitchnab1.htm>. It
is a "compare and contrast" essay in which the two artists are used to
illuminate each other's work.
Sadly, Davidson makes an initial misstep. He writes that: " I have found
Hitchcock's work to, in fact,share a much greater affinity with that of
the Russian émigré writer Vladimir Nabokov, with whom he is not typically
associated since there is no apparent connection (as there is, for
example, between Nabokov and Stanley Kubrick, who made a film version of
Lolita in 1962 based on Nabokov's screenplay). "
As readers of the Selected Letters know, there is indeed a connection, as
Hitchcock attempted to solicit a screenplay from Nabokov in 1964 (VN:
Selected Letters 1940-1977, pages 361-66). Hitchcock's interest in Nabokov
as a potential screenplay collaborator makes explicit one's intuitive
association of two artists who enjoyed playing with viewer/reader
expectations, among other similarities that Davidson elucidates.
D. K. Holm