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Dear Nabokovians,
To mark the 110th year since VN's birth I will be giving a lecture
tomorrow, at the Brazilian Academy of Letters in Rio de Janeiro, on
Nabokov and Machado. Machado is Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
(1839-1908), Brazil's greatest writer (journalist, poet, dramatist, and
especially novelist and short-story writer) who is the most
Nabokov-like of all great writers I have read--and also, on some
points, the complete contrary to Nabokov, or so I guess (he is famously
elusive, a sphinx, an enigma, a riddle, to the Lusophones who read
him).
Since I know no Portuguese, since I arrived in Rio (Machado never
ventured further than 75 miles from the city) less than a day ago,
since Machado was the founding president of the Brazilian Academy of
Letters (and was re-elected every year until his death), since the BAL
building is known as the Casa de Machado, and since I'm not sure I can
even pronounce his name, let alone that of some of his characters, I am
mildly petrified (I realize mild petrification is a rare condition).
But should you wish to see a nervous Boyd on Nabokov and Machado, you
can watch live on the Internet tomorrow (Thursday 17) at 16:30, US
Eastern Standard Time, at http://www.academia.org.br.
The lecture was organized by a young Brazilian writer, Claudio Soares,
whom I will meet only tomorrow. He is the author of a hypertext novel,
Santos-Dumos No. 8 (as he points out, a Santos-Dumont plane features in
Pale Fire), and since the first word of the novel is Lemniscate, you
can sense the depth and elegance of his interest in Nabokov. He tells
me, all the same, that this word also alludes to a novel by another
famous Brazilian writer--not Machado.
Brian Boyd