Sandy
Klein sends Chip Kidd on VN Covers..."Kidd began his turn by
reading excerpts from published letters in which VN excoriated publishers,
editors, and their scuttling assistants with his reactions to their jacket and
paperback cover submissions. Kidd went on to read VN’s remarks on other book
covers. VN’s main points were, in so many words, “be biologically accurate”, “be
textually accurate”, and, when inspiration or knowledge fails, use simple black
type. I have to say that one publisher, Putnam, seemed to catch on. VN would
have enjoyed the edgy covers Kidd designed for the Portuguese publisher
Companhia Das Letras. Kidd showed images of them as they were meant to be seen
by the prospective book buyer..The covers were witty, strongly graphic,
in-your-face, often juxtaposed images causing us in the audience first to feel
the neck snap of recognition and then to laugh.."*
JM: As a
common Brazilian book buyer I confess that I find such
enthussing excessive. Probably I lack the aforementioned sense of humor or
miss the "edginess." In my opinion the designer often misses the point
about the theme he chose to portray. For
example, Ada's cover topmost item is an unidentified mansion house. Experts
might place it either in Florida or somewhere in Russia: is that
wise? Below the mansion one sees an enlarged section of a butterfly's
head and slice of wing. There's more to Nabokov than butterflies,
no?
The covers seldom, if ever, carry anything
else besides two (sometimes one) images. Never a word. The title and
author's name is only to be found in a transient "belly band" (in
"Ada", including another image, now with clouds and lake) - and
in the spine label.
His success in TOoL is more
encompassing, perhaps this has not been possible for him in the
more simple paperback editions. The covers of Lolita
and Laughter in the Dark are also laudable. For many others he might have
employed "simple black type."
Returning to the amusing theme of goblets:
Jerry Friedman:...Humbert
says that when he met Annabel he was a faunlet in his own right. Like
Jansy Mello, I've wondered why the "l" in "faunlet", and thought it was euphony
as she suggests. Or maybe "faunet" would have looked too
French?
JM: There are names
like "Jane" and "Janet", or as "Lucie" and "Lucette", Bernard and
Bernadette, also "Juanita" (one of the names VN considered for his
novel about "nymphets") and "Lolita" (Dolores, Dolly, Lola, Lolita).
The ending with "ita" in Spanish is a diminutive, such as "ette" in
French. I cannot remember similar
transformations for masculine names, such as John, Lucius, Juan. There are
tender diminutives such as Willy or Teddy, though.
Would "fauns", as "males"
and unlike "nymphs", consequently have deserved
the added (hmmm!) "l" in order to distinguish them from those other
feminine creatures?
[QUERY] Very often, wherever I read in the
internet texts a reference to Dmitri Nabokov his name is
followed by a blank space. Can someone explain what it means?
.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
1.Christie’s 4 December auction of VN’s index
cards/manuscript of The Original of Laura. On 5 May 2004, the well-known French
auction house Tajan offered 104 lots from Dmitri Nabokov’s personal library of
inscribed and lepidopterized presentation copies of his father’s works along
with minor manuscript material and books about VN. Some of the books included
annotations and corrections... I heard through the grapevine that the auction
was a disaster and that nothing was sold... So here at Christie’s we have,
quantitatively, a much more modest offering: one manuscript (very much in the
public’s literary eye today) and five inscribed editions...And the 138 index
cards? I ask myself, How often does a novel by a major literary figure come on
the market? Extremely rarely. I mentally turn the cards over in my hands. This
is terra incognita. This is at the very high end of the literary market. I see a
shot into the stratosphere that will, like a cloud-seeding experiment, affect
everything VN under it. So for now, unsatisfyingly, I decline to come to a
conclusion. I’ll attend and see what happens and then reach for an understanding... Dmitri
Nabokov has consigned the 138
index cards to the New York branch of Christie’s [...]
2. Looking Closely at Sebastian Knight: The
first edition of VN’s first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight,
is a bibliographic hybrid in ways I wasn’t fully aware of in the 1980s when I
was pulling my bibliography together. Published by New Directions in 1941,
TRLoSK, I have determined, was issued in anywhere from five to eight possible
combinations of bindings, labels, and dust jackets... Back to bindings, labels,
and dust jackets. They come in a triplet of pairs.
3. John Shade’s Word Golf: " From
yesterday’s (31 August 2009) New York Times, Science Section, “After the
Transistor, a Leap Into the Microcosm” by John Markoff, third paragraph, third
sentence: “The leaking electrons make it more difficult to know when a
transistor is in an on or off state, the information that makes electronic
computing possible.” Have you ever seen five two letter words (here, “is in an
on or”) used consecutively (and unconsciously, I presume) in one sentence in a
piece of journalism? And even more startlingly, the five form, in their written
order, a perfect “word golf” sequence, from “is” to “or”.As you certainly know,
word golf was a hobby of John Shade...The five-word is-or sequence is obviously
not the shortest possible, as word golf calls for. You could do it in two steps
if you use the slightly uncommon word “os” as the intermediary. There are other
possibilities. But the point here is that it was done by
chance.