After I bought a multifaceted (or
multifacetious!) book yesterday: "Politica" by Adam Thirlwell, I
realized that his name sounded familiar. Indeed, he was mentioned by
the Nab-List last May (cf.www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/.../poets-head-platter/), and then Carolyn
Kunin posted his article on "Verses and Versions."
I tried to learn more about Thirlwell in
the internet and found an oldish, off-hand Nab-sighting, with a
plausible whiff of VN's Camera Obscura," in an article by Boyd Tonkin,
written in August
14,2010:
"Yet
the image of Thirlwell as a gilded gadfly never quite fitted the bill.
Miss Herbert abounds with hosannahs for mischief-makers who bravely insisted on
laughter in the dark. It speaks up for a pantheon of exiles and
dissenters, profound jokers who shake the chains of a tyrannous history. The
book's "immature" aesthetics resolve into an ethics "which teaches respect for
the minor, the overlooked, the unsure". These underdogs laugh like hyenas.The
Escape will, again, fail to please the literary puritans, but the novel - and
its protagonist - has a more visibly beating heart....www.independent.co.uk > ... > Books > Feature.
So I was convinced that there was more Nabokov in
Thirlwell than I had given him credit for. And... yes! An old review at www.guardian.co.uk/.../referenceandlanguages.gustaveflaubert - is worth examining, in connectionto Thirlwell's book "The
delighted states" and its translation of Nabokov's short-story "Mademoiselle O,"
and various other translatory proposals, with contrasting reviews
(Cf.www.rochester.edu/College/.../index.php?id=1164 - ;
www.harpers.org/archive/2008/07/hbc-90003299 - ;www.observer.com/.../our-critics-tip-sheet-current-reading-kafka-flaubert-and-nabokov-come-out-play - Estados Unidos -;www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_02/2467;www.spectator.co.uk > Book
Club;sebald.wordpress.com/category/adam-thirlwell/ ;w.nytimes.com/2008/06/.../18eder.html?
)