----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 7:33 PM
Subject: Fw: Fwd: X-men Xavier + Kinbote
I think the admiration for VN, if that indeed was
what the author of X-Men was expressing, definitely flowed one way
only.
I'm not an expert either, but my take is that while
some of these below mentioned "counter culture" groups might have thought it
"hip" to allude to VN or his work, Nabokov himself would have wanted nothing to
do with any movements, schools or trends - however marginal or avant garde
they may have considered themselves. In Strong Opinions, VN was quite critical
of drug taking self proclaimed "radicals", campus demonstrators (I think he
referred to them as being mostly ordinary hooligans with a few clever
rogues mixed in), and hippies and beatniks, which he also derided in Lolita,
Pale Fire and probably other places. He was, after all, rather
conservative in the sense of seeing right through Soviet totalitarinism (from
long, intense personal experience) while many American 60's "hip" people
thought - and some still think - that the only dictatorship was here
in the US, not the USSR or Cuba.
VN also observed that a genius the likes of James
Joyce would occasionally read tabloid journals, sensationalist low brow stuff,
and perhaps, one can infer, some comic books; but only to get a sort of handle
on topical and scatological tastes. Joyce, like VN, might then make use of the
odd piece of trash here and there in a novel, but he would transform it, weave
it into the powerful type of ecstatic prose he is known for. To wit
the famous quote: "Nothing is more exhilerating than Philistine
exuberance."
If VN was known on mainstream TV and Time mag, it
was probably for the red herring effect that the Lolita controversy caused - a
superficial allure at best. I don't think he was, or is, "accessible" to more
than a relatively small, and serious, literary audience.
again, just my two cents...
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 3:13 PM
Subject: Fwd: X-men Xavier + Kinbote
----- Forwarded message from RAT101@aol.com -----
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 01:13:53 EST
From: RAT101@aol.com
well, i have no
evidence for what i'm about to speculate, but here goes:
In the early
'60s, comic books and their creators were certainly on the edge
of the
emerging "counter-culture" --- amongst whose adherents the idea of
blending
high culture with low culture -- and of legitimating "low" culture like
comic
books, would have been very popular...
The whole concept of the X-men is
very counter-culture, a group of "mutant"
teenagers trained by the wheelchair
bound but brillant Professor Xavier. Shades
of Herbert Marcuse or C. Wright
Mills, of Kinsey, of SDS -- not to mention
the civil rights movement --
because the X-men are "mutants" who are
discriminated against by
mainstream society and have to fight for acceptance
through
their brave
deeds...definitely a lot of symbolism for the real events going on
in the
South, in Vietnam, on college campuses...
The writers of the X-men comic
book would stereotypically have been beatnik
intellectuals, smoking pot,
involved or at least aware of radical politics, and
readers of controversial
writers like Nabokov. Just as Sting and the Police
evoke Humbert Humbert in
their song a generation later, the writers of the
X-men may well have read
"Pale Fire" and used the name as an allusive inside
joke.
Nabokov
in the '60s was a living, controversial, best selling writer not
confined to
the universities or the academy. The original paperbacks, as you can
see from
their covers, were marketed towards a mass audience; how different
from the
Vintage editions of today, with their tasteful and subdued covers
that
proclaim, "i am serious literature for a refined reader."
Back then, VN was
on mainstream TV, made the cover of TIME magazine, and so
would have been very
accessible even to readers of comic books.
-----
End forwarded message -----
well, i have no evidence for what i'm about to speculate, but
here goes:
In the early '60s, comic books and their creators were
certainly on the edge of the emerging "counter-culture" --- amongst whose
adherents the idea of blending high culture with low culture -- and of
legitimating "low" culture like comic books, would have been very
popular...
The whole concept of the X-men is very counter-culture, a
group of "mutant" teenagers trained by the wheelchair bound but brillant
Professor Xavier. Shades of Herbert Marcuse or C. Wright Mills, of Kinsey, of
SDS -- not to mention the civil rights movement -- because the X-men are
"mutants" who are discriminated against by mainstream society and have to fight
for acceptance through their brave deeds...definitely a lot of symbolism for the
real events going on in the South, in Vietnam, on college campuses...
The
writers of the X-men comic book would stereotypically have been beatnik
intellectuals, smoking pot, involved or at least aware of radical politics, and
readers of controversial writers like Nabokov. Just as Sting and the Police
evoke Humbert Humbert in their song a generation later, the writers of the X-men
may well have read "Pale Fire" and used the name as an allusive inside joke.
Nabokov in the '60s was a living, controversial, best selling writer not
confined to the universities or the academy. The original paperbacks, as you can
see from their covers, were marketed towards a mass audience; how different from
the Vintage editions of today, with their tasteful and subdued covers that
proclaim, "i am serious literature for a refined reader." Back then, VN
was on mainstream TV, made the cover of TIME magazine, and so would have been
very accessible even to readers of comic books.