VN COLLATION #25
by Suellen Stringer-Hye
Jean and Alexander Heard Library
Vanderbilt University
stringers@library.vanderbilt.edu

Preface

I was surprised when Don Johnson recently mentioned that NABOKV-L is now in its tenth year. When the listserv first went online, I proposed to Don an idea for a monthly column: a collection of references to Nabokov in the popular press. For the first time access to this material was possible; it was very novel, very exciting, and even I would say revolutionary, to be able to search an electronic index and retrieve not only a citation to an article but the full text of the article as well. Only a few years earlier a researcher compiling a similar collection would have spent many hours with the "Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature," locating references to the articles and then many days in the library rooting the said articles out. For the first time an amateur and time constrained scholar could conduct informal research on the object of one's passion, in my case the author Vladimir Nabokov.

Admittedly, some of the early pleasures I found absorbed in the pages of my computer generated printout (since you were paying for the online time you had to print it out to read it) were those of a fan scouting for the bolded name in a paragraph to connect with the the activities of a favorite celeb. But my real and continued objective over the last ten years is the same as that originally stated--to study the mechanics of fame and reputation, the play between what the author has left behind, and its reception by the "general public" (if only defined as readers of the popular press). Although time and attention necessitated a lengthening from the monthly to the yearly, I continue to enjoy the quest and hope the readers of NABOKV-L share some of my enthusiasm. On another note, I have personally been nourished for the past ten years by the quiet, intelligent, often humorous, unique, NABOKV-L, so ably guided by Don Johnson and his co-editor Galya Diment. Thanks Don and Galya, for letting me participate in the enterprise.

Student says VN won't pay the bills!

Readers' Opinions in the Journal-Constitution regarding a previous article written by a female graduate of Yale complaining about her inability to find suitable employment elicits this response:

Despite their extensive merit, Charles Dickens, Vladimir Nabokov and Virginia Woolf won't pay the bills. Unfortunately, today's Ivy League does not always do a great job of preparing its pampered students for the real world. Even hard work does not always pay off when and how you expect, and the world does not owe you anything, despite your academic credentials.

ERIC WACHTER. Wachter, of Marietta, is a law student at Harvard University.

Is this one online? From the March 11, 2002 Independent (London)

ONE OF the year's most curious film premiers captured the late Richard Burton in a role that became a legendary part of his life story without ever reaching the silver screen.

The Bradford Film Festival showed eight minutes of Burton's ill-fated role in Laughter In The Dark, a movie based on Vladimir Nabokov's novel of the same name, as part of a feature entitled Unfinished: Films That Never Were. Burton, at the height of his powers and married to Elizabeth Taylor at the time, walked off the set several weeks into screening, though the reason remains unclear. Tony Richardson, the director, later said he fired Burton because he was "hours late, unpleasant to the crew and other actors, sneering about the script" and "would disappear into his caravan" for hours with Taylor. An alternative version of the same legend has Burton storming off in contempt. Either way, Richardson started again from scratch with Nicol Williamson in Burton's role as an art dealer and the initial rushes were junked.

The fragments, from a time in Burton's troubled career when he was still capable of brilliance, provide a glimpse of how different the film would have been to the version Richardson eventually made. They also shed light on whether Laughter would have been another hit for Burton or the beginning of a slide into temporary decline. He appeared in a series of disastrous roles until artistic recovery in 1975.

Nabokov helps grassroots crusaders save Telluride Colorado's valley floor.
From the March 6, 2002 Denver Post

TELLURIDE - Spotted cows, Vladimir Nabokov and Big Bird Geezus all played a role this week in a newly amped-up grassroots effort to save Telluride's valley floor.

They learned from Deborah Brosnan, founder of the Sustainable Ecosystems Institute, that the valley floor is 'as cosmopolitan as New York in terms of species.'

The wetlands and meadows have, ironically, been overgrazed by the valley cows, and they contain mine tailings piles. But they are also home to an estimated 40 species of butterfly, carpets of high- altitude bog violets, 155 different birds and a stretch of one of the last undammed rivers in the country.

Brosnan noted that Nabokov visited and studied butterflies in this area during a 1958 trip to Telluride and called it one of the four best spots in the United States for butterflies.

Why is it so hard to get Nabokov right?

From a review of "Castaways": The Out of the Box Players' staging of Vladimir Nabokov's "The Pole" is the most sedate and bland movement of this dramatic quartet. An imagined re-creation of the final fatal moments of Robert Falcon Scott's failed expedition to the South Pole, Nabokov's piece picks up on Mrozek's theme of survival, replacing the ocean with desolate Arttic snowfields. Caught in a blizzard just 12 miles from safety, Scott's group was experiencing a slow, tortured death. Seated in four chairs, the actors speak their lines directly out at the audience. Dressed in suits, they hardly look as if they're stuck in a snow squall. The production tries to draw a parallel between the sense of wasted life in the expedition and the desperation of modern business executives, but the stagnant staging and the uninspired deliveries send this segment of "Castaways" adrift.

Origins of "Talk" Magazine

Harvey wants, in short, a radical new magazine. It's a great idea: he wants a PORTABLE magazine, a magazine that can be moved from one room to another, a magazine full of words to look at and pictures to read. He wants a magazine that stops the disconnect between our literary and domestic culture by getting, like, Top Homemaker Martha Stewart to write on the use of the apostrophe in the works of sex-obsessed genius Vladimir Nabokov, or doyen celebrity serial killer PAR EXCELLENCE Charles Manson to tell all about how to make that truly scrumptious Thanksgiving Loaf just like Mom used to bake it.

Best Seller Lists
From the Ottawa Citizen

In Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900-1999 (Barnes and Noble; $20 U.S.), Michael Korda, editor in chief at Simon & Schuster, surveys a range of annual bestsellers lists to comment on American literary tastes and trends over the 20th century. Before the lists appeared, American publishers reprinted European books without asking the authors' permission or paying them royalties. So boasting about sales would have been hazardous. Only with passage of the international copyright law in 1891 did U.S. publishers see the benefit of the list: nothing succeeds like success, and advertising high sales attracted further sales.

The lists compiled before 1900, before American culture had acquired confidence, offered far more international fare than modern lists, but otherwise, reading tastes seem to have remained consistent over the century. Mysteries, a century of Danielle Steels and John Grishams, but also serious fiction (Evelyn Waugh, Isak Dinesen, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov, Umberto Eco are among the many surprisingly highbrow authors who have made the lists); books about the current events of the day, self-help and religion. There are some telling parallels. The Man Nobody Knows (1925), which portrayed Jesus as a talented chief executive and salesman, foreshadows the current Wall Street Journal bestseller Jesus CEO.

Herbert and Tolkien right there next to Bellow and Nabokov
From the December 26, 2001 San Francisco Chronicle.

Artists and writers don't work in vacuums: They thrive on inspiration, take cues from the masters and endeavor to form their own style. We asked several Bay Area authors what book they would most like to save written.

-- Dave Eggers, author, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

"I guess I first think of writers whose styles just kill me, and when I think of writers like that I think first of (Vladimir) Nabokov and (Saul) Bellow. They both manage to put so much of the world onto each page--even if, or especially when, their protagonists are sitting in one place--while at the same time breathing so much lyricism into each sentence. "Wait, scratch all that. I wish I'd written Dune. Frank Herbert and his ilk don't get enough credit. They create entire worlds, scientifically sound, logical and intensely moral worlds of sand or gas or whatever, and too often we marginalize them. These people are titans! In a pluralistic world, which is what we're in--and books should reflect this--we have to be able to put Herbert and Tolkien right there next to Bellow and Nabokov, don't we? Dune it is."

Another Magazine
From the November 24, 2001 Daily Telegraph

Don't let the title fool you. Another Magazine isn't just another magazine. Former editor-in-chief of the edgy Dazed & Confused, Jefferson Hack is at the helm of this new biannual "fashion and cultural" tome and it's pretty . . . well . . . I'm not sure, actually. The contributors' list is seriously A with photographers including Helmut Newton, who deserves a gold star for his brooding shoot with actor Jude Law, Terry Richardson, Nick Knight (he shot the cover, incidentally) and Mario Sorrenti. Stella McCartney is the art director of a nude centrefold of celeb couple Kate Hudson and Chris Robinson and there's a literary insert with extracts from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Hack says the cover shot of "real people" embracing is radical and indicative of the mag's philosophy, which is to "keep a sense of romance alive in the world where ideals are often replaced by deals". It's a little art-school, very earnest, provocative with a capital SV.

Humbert's Clues
From the November 4, 2001 Sunday Times

Schools force-feed books to children but parents can get better results with a few simple tricks. In Nabokov's great novel Lolita, the corrupt Humbert Humbert has an obsession, apart from the obvious one of Lolita herself. "I could never make her read any other book than a comic book," he says. "Any literature a peg higher smacked to her of school." There are two clues in Humbert's words about clever children who are reluctant readers. One is the word "make." Nobody should make anyone read anything. If we manage to make a child read anything, we damage the business of reading itself, we damage that child, and we damage that child's relationship with the book we are force-feeding them. The second clue in Humbert's words is "school." Both this government and the last have managed to make many wonderful books semi-official by stuffing them into the moist concrete of the national literacy strategy. And there could be no more effective way of curbing children's enthusiasm than the invention of the "literacy hour."

Lolita is a great work of Western art?"
From the October 31, 2001 Newsday (New York, NY)

Could the U.S. government outlaw a film version of Romeo and Juliet? That was the hypothetical question before the Supreme Court yesterday, as the justices heard arguments over the constitutionality of a 1996 law banning the use of sexually explicit computer-generated images of children.

A group of adult entertainment producers called the Free Speech Coalition, supported by civil libertarians, argues that the law, which criminalizes material that "appears to be" of sex by minors, or is promoted in such a way that it "creates the impression" the images are real, sweeps in too much legitimate speech--such as, potentially, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet or Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita.

Questions from several justices implied they were concerned that the law could be read to penalize sexual depictions that do not directly harm actual children, including those in some popular Hollywood films.

Justice Stephen Breyer asked Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement whether Breyer could be prosecuted "if I go to a video store and buy copies of Traffic, Lolita and Titanic, each of which has a scene of simulated sex among 17-year-olds." Such films would not be covered by the law, Clement responded, because they might have been made using body doubles.

"I didn't see any of those movies," Justice Antonin Scalia interjected.

"They were pretty good, actually," Breyer responded. When the Free Speech Coalition's attorney, Louis Sirkin, warned of the "radical, tragic consequences" of a law that, he said, could preclude artistic or educational depictions of adolescent sexuality, Scalia sounded skeptical.

"What great works of Western art" did Sirkin have in mind, Scalia asked.

Sirkin mentioned the film adaptation of Lolita. Scalia responded:

"Lolita is a great work of Western art?"

"Well, it received critical acclaim," Sirkin said. " Traffic got an Academy Award. Then there's The Tin Drum, and the Brooke Shields movies, which some people didn't like, but ... "

"With respect," Scalia insisted, "this is not the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo."