Black Garterbelt

The Invisible Handout

The Nabokov The Original of Laura manuscript saga is getting, well, I don't know if you can even call it Nabokovian anymore.  It's just weird.

To review, VN, who took ill suddenly and was unable to do the job himself, asked his wife to burn his final, incomplete novel TOoL.  She never did, and, following her death, only child Dmitri also has demurred, although he has been whetting appetites and provoking outcry by both dangling the manuscript and also threatening to go ahead with the bonfire.

And now:

Dmitri says he reached a decision after an imagined ghostly conversation with his dead father—one in a far different key from Hamlet's talk with his dead dad.

"I have decided...that my father, with a wry and fond smile, might well have contradicted himself upon seeing me in my present situation and said, 'Well, why don't you mix the useful with the pleasurable? That is, say or do what you like but why not make some money on the damn thing?' "

And so the imagined shade of V.N., demonstrating indulgent and affectionate fondness for his son's "present situation" (it's not clear what exactly that means, but it could refer to financial or heath problems or just the worldwide outcry to save Laura), gave him ghostly permission to raise some funds with it.

Odd, but I can relate.  My father gave me ghostly permission to raise some funds by mowing the lawn once.

Nabokov on Realism

Pith & vinegar:

The painters you admire are for the most part realists, yet it would not be altogether fair to call you a "realist."  Should one find this paradoxical?  Or does the problem derive from nomenclature?

The problem derives from pigeonholing. (Strong Opinions, p. 170)

Re: Pale Fire

Nabokov (as John Shade in Pale Fire) wrote of "...making ornaments / Of accidents and possibilities."  My love of, and belief in, that passage of PF is great, indeed.

For example, by letting the iTunes run, I've learned today that My Morning Jacket's "Mahgeeta" makes the perfect companion piece to My Bloody Valentine's  "I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It)."

Untold possibilities. Small accidents. Useful ornaments. Simple pleasures.

Yes.

Love Hurts

Analyzing bad listmaking is like analyzing bad lovemaking; better we just bleach the sheets & forget this ever happened.

That said, in "100 Blogs We Love," the near-absence of blogs related to books, music, sports, booze, and pornography leads me to the conclusion that the editors of PC World aren't the type of people your pal the Rake would be proud to call Jim. Quoting Nabokov.  Whom they have clearly no use for.

(Via "Fast" Eddie Chizzamp)

It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world

"For the love of God, take care never to grow careless about venial sin, however small … There is nothing small if it goes against so great a sovereign."

***

The tagline for a review of Marilyn Manson's latest album:

Nabokovian Jesus Freak in Wonderland (or Cars, Sex, and Death)

Sure, this is trivial, but if thinking people allow this to continue we might as well retire "Nabokovian" and "Lolita" from the lexicon altogether.  Aside from the oxymoronic "Nabokovian Jesus Freak," what we have here is a reference to Marilyn Manson as "Nabokovian" because he fucks a woman young enough to be his daughter and flaunts it in his songs and videos.

Let me be plain: Manson is the opposite of "Nabokovian." 

Editors of the world please try harder.