Subject
"La Veneziana"
Date
Body
From: ValSyl@aol.com
Can anyone cite any critical writing discussing VN's story, "La
Veneziana"? (in last year's 20-pound collection). This is an early story
and has all sorts of youthful arrogance, etc., but it is so like our
postwar magic-realism in some ways, a path VN did not exactly travel in
his mature work. I like magic-realism, understand, I think, why VN
wouldn't, find it fascinating that he flirted with the form before it was
formally invented. Also, the main character, Simpson (a nonathletic,
Thurberian Simpson -- not a running back) is described variously with blue
eyes and glinting pince-nez: the exact phrase is "meek but mad blue eyes
that fluttered and glinted behind his pince-nez like limp light-blue
butterflies."
ZING we flash-forward several decades to an enchanting,
although undeveloped, character mentioned in Pnin: "Judith Clyde, an aging
blonde in aqua rayon, with bright blue eyes basking in lunacy behind ...
pince nez." I have always loved Judith Clyde and wanted to see more of
her (she is my high school economics teacher to a "T"), so I was delighted
to find her foreshadowed, overlooking a gender change and so on, in the
young Simpson of that story.
Sylvia Weiser Wendel
MFA Iowa ;
MA Boston Univ. ;
BA Brandeis ;
VN-FAN since junior high school
Can anyone cite any critical writing discussing VN's story, "La
Veneziana"? (in last year's 20-pound collection). This is an early story
and has all sorts of youthful arrogance, etc., but it is so like our
postwar magic-realism in some ways, a path VN did not exactly travel in
his mature work. I like magic-realism, understand, I think, why VN
wouldn't, find it fascinating that he flirted with the form before it was
formally invented. Also, the main character, Simpson (a nonathletic,
Thurberian Simpson -- not a running back) is described variously with blue
eyes and glinting pince-nez: the exact phrase is "meek but mad blue eyes
that fluttered and glinted behind his pince-nez like limp light-blue
butterflies."
ZING we flash-forward several decades to an enchanting,
although undeveloped, character mentioned in Pnin: "Judith Clyde, an aging
blonde in aqua rayon, with bright blue eyes basking in lunacy behind ...
pince nez." I have always loved Judith Clyde and wanted to see more of
her (she is my high school economics teacher to a "T"), so I was delighted
to find her foreshadowed, overlooking a gender change and so on, in the
young Simpson of that story.
Sylvia Weiser Wendel
MFA Iowa ;
MA Boston Univ. ;
BA Brandeis ;
VN-FAN since junior high school