Category: Lit Crit

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Ada Arcana Books Fiction Lit Crit Nabokov

Some Eccentric Readings of Ada

“I loath Van Veen”

Nabokov, Interview Time (1969), cited in Strong Opinions

“I believe that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that, far from having been a frivolous firebird, I was a rigid moralist kicking sin, cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel — and assigning sovereign power to tenderness, talent, and pride”

Nabokov, Interview (1971) cited in Strong Opinions

“Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss.”

Nabokov, On a Book Entitled Lolita

Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist’s son and translator, joined the Internet discussion with his recollection that his father thought the idea that either Shade or Kinbote could have invented the other barely less absurd than the idea that each could have invented the other…

https://thenabokovian.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/NABOKV-L-0013164___body.html

As I continue to my project of re-reading Ada, a couple of aspects are a struggle. One is the richness and allusiveness (or less charitably incomprehensibility) of the writing – Brian Boyd’s annotations are a great help there. The other difficult aspect is the motley appeal of the novel. While a clearer understanding of the structures make me appreciate it more, I am certainly not the only reader not to take to Ada. Even Boyd includes a kind of plea for patience and persistence in his Ada: the place of consciousness.

That aspects of the novel, and certainly its protagonists, are seemingly intentionally repellent has puzzled a number of readers. In response some have gone so far as to suggest unorthodox or revisionist readings of Ada. I’m going to consider here

  1. David Auerbach‘s proposal that Van is a radically unreliable narrator and that large portions of the novel are part of his fantasy (Kinbote Triumphant in Hell: The Riddle of Nabokov’s Ada)
  2. Alexey Sklyarenko‘s idea that the editor and typist of the novel dictated by Van and Ada, Ronald Oranger and Violet Knox, are themselves Ada’s grandchildren.
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Ada Books Lit Crit Nabokov Reviews

Ada: Chapter impressions so far

So I’m 30 chapters through reading Nabokov’s Ada alongside Brian Boyd’s extensive annotations. It is quite heavy going, and I’m continuously grateful to BB for explaining all the numerous allusions, great and small, that otherwise would pass me by.

I’ll have a fuller appraisal up soon – in particular comparing Ada to Glory, which has lots of parallels I think to this section (Ardis the First) of the later work. In summary it’s still not really working for me. I’m surprised how much more I like the sections that appeal, but I’m also finding there are themes and whole chapters that plain aren’t working for me, even after they’ve been convincingly explained by Prof. Boyd.

Why can’t the whole book be as good as Ada’s real things, towers and bridges? It’s a well know mystery.

The structure of this first section is certainly impressive: I could even be persuaded that everything in part 1 is there for a purpose (whether that purpose is implemented in an artistically satisfying way is, of course, another question). A big problem is the length. I’m sort of saturated by Ada already, and it’s a little alarming I’m less than a third of the way through.

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Ada Books Fiction Lit Crit Nabokov Reviews

Speak: Memory! What I remember before re-reading Ada

Ada is Vladimir Nabokov’s longest book, and the first of his late European period after he found fame with Lolita then devoted ten years to his controversial, literalist translation of Eugene Onegin. It shares many features and themes with his earlier work, but is also strikingly different: massive, heavy-going and sometimes impenetrable, it stands in contrast with the lightness and economy of his American work.

I tend to think of Ada as a maximalist, interesting failure. Nabokov described Finnegan’s Wake as “that cold pudding” of a book, and in an irony of memory I had transposed that description onto Ada. I tend to agree with Michael Wood that it’s a late rather than mature work where the ambition outstripped the result. It’s a hard book to love.

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Ada Books Lit Crit Nabokov

Brian Boyd, Lit Crit and Ada

This is a collation of my thoughts on the pre-eminent Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd’s approach to literary criticism, particularly with regard to Ada – likely Nabokov’s least appreciated work.

I wrote this up as part of the discussion of Ada and Boyd in relation to Michael Wood on the ilxor forums, here. These discussions are lively and wide-ranging, and I enjoyed the diverse takes and frustrations expressed about Ada – some of which I share.

I have found Boyd’s work immensely useful in deepening my appreciation for Nabokov, and so I did want to write something of a defence of Boyd’s approach. I argue here that his project is rather unusual in the world of lit crit: an almost scientific empiricism, which well suits his subjects (Nabokov, Popper, and … Dr. Seuss?).

I’d still contend that Boyd remains the most useful critic for understanding Nabokov, for getting the most out of the incredible richness of his designs (too rich, likely, in Ada) and for real aesthetic joy in his work.

Critical mass

With regard to the idea that Boyd is a Nabokov fan, and this limits his usefulness as a critic:

The argument is that Boyd lacks “critical distance” or is somehow in thrall to Nabokov.

But I think Boyd is doing something a little different from Wood and other critics. I have enormous time for Wood and The Magicians Doubts, but I think it’s a partial view of Nabokov underwritten by some of Wood’s theoretical commitments: namely the primacy of a moral view of suffering and pity, and the division between signature and style. The former is definitely an important strand in Nabokov: this is essentially the theme of Pnin – but it’s not the only one and I think it leads Wood to over-emphasize what he can take to fit this theory in novels like Bend Sinister.

Boyd shares some of my frustration with apriorism and theory in literary criticism. He is almost an empiricist.

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Books Lit Crit Nabokov Podcasts Politics Rand The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand – a good writer after all?

Long after the politics have passed, literary quality – or lack of it – remains.

The following is a comment I put together on an episode of the Origin Story podcast produced by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. The episode covered Ayn Rand and her legacy – while the guys are very unsympathetic to her political position, I was pretty astonished to find that they thought she was a pretty effective fiction writer! This is my response, which became a bit ridiculously long for an inline comment – somewhat edited for clarity and to incorporate my correction. You can see the original here.

(The podcast series is really excellent, highly recommended to check it out)

There is a slight danger of slipping into conspiracism here in thinking that all critics must have had a political axe to grind. There is a simpler explanation: that there really are serious literary defects which become obvious when you are familiar with the history of the form.

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Books Lit Crit Reviews

Review: Camille Paglia (take 2)

Provocations, Free Women, Free Men and Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academia in the Hour of the Wolf by Camille Paglia

For some reason I keep giving Camille Paglia’s Provocations another shot. I didn’t get any further this time before throwing it across the room, and reading bits of Free Women, Free Men I’m sad to say it too doesn’t hold up very well in hindsight.

To cheer myself up I read her long essay Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders. It’s a bit silly in places, but is very funny and the targets (particularly academic careerism) are very worthwhile:

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Arcana Books Lit Crit Nabokov Reviews

November Nabokoviana

Find what the Sailor has Hidden Priscilla Meyer (1988), Major Literary Characters: Lolita ed Harold Bloom (1993), Lolita: A Janus Text Lance Olsen (1995).

I like pretty much the whole Nabokov canon, underrated earlier Russian works included – but the run he had writing in English and the American years: Sebastian Knight, Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin and Speak, Memory – is just unbeatable. I think I could read Pale Fire on an endless loop and not get bored by it.

It’s just joyous maximalism and so damn fun to read.

If you’ve not read any Nabokov … I mean, imagine like Joyce or Borges, then imagine the same mastery of language and artistry but in a form that’s so light-handed, so economical and readable, so natural and funny and lively you can just fly over it … and then you stop and realise that the beauty, the virtuosity, the moving humanism, the word games and the literary references are all there – all at once, all part of the same thing. It’s just joyous maximalism and so damn fun to read.

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Books Lit Crit Nabokov Reviews

Lectures on Russian Literature

By Vladimir Nabokov (1981)

Lectures on Russian Literature by Nabokov is just a joy to read again and again. If you’re at all interested in 19th century Russian Literature this is a delight, and if you’re not, you might well be after reading his hilarious study of Gogol – a lunatic and a genius, in one of the most eccentric works of criticism of all time, which starts with leeches dangling off sick writer’s nose, and then meditates on noses, Russian obsession with noses, Gogol’s desire to become one giant nose, which goes off wondering the streets without his owner’s awareness.

A joy to read again and again

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Books Lit Crit Nonfiction Reviews

Review: Provocations

By Camille Paglia (2018)

I completely failed the first time, so I tried again on holiday to get through Provocations by Camille Paglia.

My conclusion: that I am done with Camille Paglia. Her contrarian shtick may have been refreshing fifteen years ago but her act has been stolen by the intellectually vacuous and she’s keen to follow them

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Arcana Books Lit Crit Nabokov The Feud

Gerschenkron and Nabokov

This follows up in detail on the review of Alex Beam’s The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson and the end of a beautiful friendship. You can read my (not entirely positive) review here.

The dust-up of the feud, and the spectrum of reviews, seems unsatisyingly damning for Beam. So, as a final word on the exchange, he brings in a deus ex machina in the form of Alexander Gerschenkron. We are told that Gerschenkron – the “known as ‘The Great Gerschenkron’ … a mythic figure … feared no-one, not the Bolsheviks, not the Nazis … certainly not Vladimir Nabokov”. In Beam’s account, Gerschenkron attacks every aspect of Onegin – the translation, the commentary, and the scholarship in a “merciless takedown” – Nabokov never replied, and quietly incorporated his changes into the revision.

This account should trouble us, as it brings convenient closure for Beam and allows him to avoid having to examine the scholarship in detail. How accurate is it?

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