Subject
Great Books of the Century in _THE NEW STATESMAN_: ADA
Date
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From: ptudor@budfin.co.nz <mailto:ptudor@budfin.co.nz>
Over the past two weeks, the Australian Financial Review has been
serialising a feature from the New Statesman on "the great books of the 20th
century". So far, items have been published on Rushdie's The Satanic Verses,
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, V S Naipaul's An Area of Darkness
and Ada. To come are articles on books by Douglas Reed, Hubert Selby (at a
guess, Last Exit to Brooklyn), Celine (I know not which title is to be
profiled) and Edward Said (Orientalism, perhaps?, note here that the feature
is about great "books", rather than any particular form of writing).
In her article on Ada, Natasha Walter (author of The New Feminism) explains
her choice thus: "But I also feel that a book of the century should simply
be the book that has meant the most to its chooser, one particular reader.
By choosing Ada, I don't mean to say that Ada is more important or better
than whatever generally tops these lists, but that these lists really mean
nothing to anyone who is not a bookseller or an academic; attempts to class
and compare the unclassifiable and incomparable."
Some of Walter's pronouncements strike me as fanciful and, at times,
naiïve:
"I see Ada as at the heart of Nabokov's work, the novel in which he dares at
last to break open the soft kernel of passion and tenderness that lies under
all his fiction..."
The editor underscores this analysis, headlining the piece "Nabokov's last
chance". I have no doubt that most of the members of this discussion group
would take Ms Walter to task over this statement!
But there is no denying Walter's enthusiasm for the book: "Ada is full of a
fragile charm that elsewhere fragments in N's hands, the 'happy forever
feeling at the end of never ending fairy tales'. But is it just a fairy
tale? I would say, no - or, like the best fairy tales, it distils a reality
that more obviously realistic forms often bypass. Lolita is, apparently, a
far more naturalistic work... But what realism did N. really approach in
Lolita? A stagey one at best... The landscape of Ada is not so
straightforward... This is a landscape created from literature and memory -
but is it any less real for that? No: when he walks into 'the green reality
of the garden' near the beginning of Ada, Van takes the sympathetic reader
with him into a different sort of realism...
"In Ada, N. reminds us what literature can do when it is not engaged in
being politically or socially relevant, when it is only engaged in being
emotionally true - it can render the inner reality of our lives a transient
but naked and unforgettable thing."
With regard to the earlier question of Nabokov's references to "When Lilacs
Last" and "Amen Corner", my bibliographic wanderings/wonderings have
uncovered a "Barbara Braun" who was a music critic in the 1950s - apparently
an authority on Purcell. However, this is so far off the garden path that
one must conclude that Nabokov made her up for some purpose related to the
German translation "Brown".
From: ptudor@budfin.co.nz <mailto:ptudor@budfin.co.nz>
Over the past two weeks, the Australian Financial Review has been
serialising a feature from the New Statesman on "the great books of the 20th
century". So far, items have been published on Rushdie's The Satanic Verses,
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, V S Naipaul's An Area of Darkness
and Ada. To come are articles on books by Douglas Reed, Hubert Selby (at a
guess, Last Exit to Brooklyn), Celine (I know not which title is to be
profiled) and Edward Said (Orientalism, perhaps?, note here that the feature
is about great "books", rather than any particular form of writing).
In her article on Ada, Natasha Walter (author of The New Feminism) explains
her choice thus: "But I also feel that a book of the century should simply
be the book that has meant the most to its chooser, one particular reader.
By choosing Ada, I don't mean to say that Ada is more important or better
than whatever generally tops these lists, but that these lists really mean
nothing to anyone who is not a bookseller or an academic; attempts to class
and compare the unclassifiable and incomparable."
Some of Walter's pronouncements strike me as fanciful and, at times,
naiïve:
"I see Ada as at the heart of Nabokov's work, the novel in which he dares at
last to break open the soft kernel of passion and tenderness that lies under
all his fiction..."
The editor underscores this analysis, headlining the piece "Nabokov's last
chance". I have no doubt that most of the members of this discussion group
would take Ms Walter to task over this statement!
But there is no denying Walter's enthusiasm for the book: "Ada is full of a
fragile charm that elsewhere fragments in N's hands, the 'happy forever
feeling at the end of never ending fairy tales'. But is it just a fairy
tale? I would say, no - or, like the best fairy tales, it distils a reality
that more obviously realistic forms often bypass. Lolita is, apparently, a
far more naturalistic work... But what realism did N. really approach in
Lolita? A stagey one at best... The landscape of Ada is not so
straightforward... This is a landscape created from literature and memory -
but is it any less real for that? No: when he walks into 'the green reality
of the garden' near the beginning of Ada, Van takes the sympathetic reader
with him into a different sort of realism...
"In Ada, N. reminds us what literature can do when it is not engaged in
being politically or socially relevant, when it is only engaged in being
emotionally true - it can render the inner reality of our lives a transient
but naked and unforgettable thing."
With regard to the earlier question of Nabokov's references to "When Lilacs
Last" and "Amen Corner", my bibliographic wanderings/wonderings have
uncovered a "Barbara Braun" who was a music critic in the 1950s - apparently
an authority on Purcell. However, this is so far off the garden path that
one must conclude that Nabokov made her up for some purpose related to the
German translation "Brown".