Post for 9/15/13

I have before me a large bedraggled scrapbook, bound in black cloth. It contains old documents, including diplomas, drafts, diaries, identity cards, penciled notes, and some printed matter, which had been in my mother’s meticulous keeping in Prague until her death there, but then, between 1939 and 1961, went through various vicissitudes. With the aid of those papers and my own recollections, I have composed the following short biography of my father (173).

Nabokov does very interesting things with memory in Speak, Memory. That's not a radical claim. But, I think what's particularly interesting about this moment is it's one of the moments in which Nabokov reminds us of the artifice. Speak, Memory is not an autobiography in many senses. It's almost a "these are all the things that happened to me that relate to this (also if this happened too it would be dramatically and symbolically interesting)". What I find interesting, is these moments where Nabokov sort of tells us as readers that it almost seems as though the goal is telling us not to latch onto the facts. This book is not about the facts. Now, I'm not saying that I think the book doesn't have many factually accurate things. What I am, however, saying is that this would be a bad book to read if you wanted to hear how Nabokov's life happened, exactly and accurately (although, it may be possible that this is a failure of the medium). I have the sense that this is one of the moments where Nabokov is reminding us that this is not intended to be read scientifically, and fact checked. I feel that biography (in this context) is almost a word for portrait. Nabokov seems much more interested in understanding what his father was about than the things his father did.

I think this is actually a really great passage with which to see the entire book. The book is filled with these moments, these facts, these specificities. But it's also filled with elements of "composition." In fact, the book is about composing all these moments from his real life. Nabokov is almost in this position that he is both composer and conductor. What I mean by that is that he is neither inventing this work entirely, nor is it just a faithful representation, of it "exactly as it was." And Nabokov is not interested in things "exactly the way they were." He is interested, rather, in telling a good story that is about his life. So things will be made up and fudged occasionally in service of a better story, or a more continuous thematic connection. I think this passage is a great stand in, or rather, a great way to interpret this text through.

Post for 11/7

I think these two chapters were interesting on a number of levels. Firstly, and this is important to Nabokov, they're both self-contained. One could simply read a single chapter, and still be satisfied. Mind you, they would likely want more, considering the quality of Nabokov's prose. But really, I think it's fascinating that these chapters are all self-contained strains of thought. They each seem to have a theme. For instance, chapter five was about Mademoiselle, six about lepidopterology. And really, I think that the whole thing can be explained with Nabokov's famed section at the end of chapter six.

I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment is timelessness--in a landscape selected at random--is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern--to the contrapucltural genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.

And I think this says a lot about Nabokov in multiple ways. The first, and perhaps the most obvious is this idea of folding the "magic carpet" of his life. He creates connections where they do not exist. And I think that is actually a pretty good way to deal with Nabokov, and a particularly good way to deal with Lolita. It's clear that Humbert's problem is that he tries to create a story, an artifice out of life. However, art and life are not the same. Humbert ends up destroying his life for his dedication to his art. He is so dedicated to superimposing the qualities of a novel onto his life, (i.e. the first paragraph of the story is gorgeous, yes, but also incredibly capital "r" Romantic) that he ends up ignoring the perspective, and humanity of Lolita. This may be a trait Nabokov and Humbert share. I'm not saying they're alike. They're not, but I think this is a point of likeness. However, Nabokov varies by seeing the humanity in others, where we have little proof that Humbert does.

The second is the idea of timelessness that Nabokov discusses. Rather than transcending death with art, he believes he transcends death in his greatest moments of life. I rather like that. Perhaps I'm projecting my own beliefs into this moment, but I really believe that's what Nabokov is saying here.

Post for 11/5

I'm finding Speak, Memory to be massively enjoyable. I think there's something wonderful that Nabokov is tapping into with this text, and that's the perception of reality. People find reality to be sacred. I do not, and (more relevantly) Nabokov does not either. The book is filled with wonderful, often absurd details about Nabokov, his family, and his history. At moments, they are actually quite funny. I think about The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a play that took many people by storm. The story (which is, at no point claimed to be entirely fiction or non-fiction) contains a section in which the protagonist goes to China, and finds that factory workers have been blacklisted for speaking up, and essentially, that the workers in factories like FoxConn are treated horribly. So the play is essentially this person telling this story. The story turned out to not be "true" (whatever the heck that means). There was a whole scandal. People were furious, and the author was dsiclaimed of his work because he hadn't "actually" gone to the factories and seen these things. This meant that many of the details were (likely) made up. I didn't really understand the controversy, and I wasn't surprised by the supposed lack of "truth" in the piece. I had gone to the theater to see a work of art. Peoples' mere subjectivities will bring us away from the facts. Furthermore, the goal of the piece seemed to me, not really to be about whether or not these things actually happened or not.

Nabokov really plays with this in Speak, Memory. Nabokov's uses of lists becomes much more interesting in this setting than it was in Lolita. Take, for instance, Chapter Three of Speak, Memory. The whole chapter is a sort of half-realistic (the boringness of the coat of arms) half absurd (the uncle who nearly died in a bomb and nearly got on the Titanic) catalog of ships. Lists seem tangible. Lists make things seem real. People are very easily convinced by math and science, no matter how phony it is. These lists play into the very idea that science and math only exist in "reality." It's the boring, unnecessary details that give a thing realism. Nabokov is not so simplistic as to simply just add a bunch of details for realism. Nabokov really stands in between fiction and non-fiction, and writes a book that very much deals with elements of reality, but fudges the details to make them more dramatically interesting. The truth is, for Nabokov, reality is fascinating in its intricate detail, but dramatically uninteresting in its nature.

Post for 10/29

This scene is a re-write of Charlotte's finding of Humbert's writings.

Mystery, that's all those Europeans are, is mystery. He won't let me in. I will let myself in. I want to see what's in that big European head of his. Hum called them locked up love letters. I know better. I know better. He starts sweating when he lies. He's not a very good liar. He always ends his lies with the twinge of a smile. It's as though he thinks he got away with it. He must have some self-doubt. He must believe on some fundamental level that he's a good liar. Well, if not on a fundamental level, then at least on some level. He's a horrible liar. You'd think a European, you'd think he'd be more intelligent, more cultured. Maybe he is. Maybe he's writing about his cultured things. Maybe he's writing in French. Ah! There's the key. Okay, and now to open the table. Papers. Okay. Oh my god. "The Haze woman. The fat old Haze woman." I'm furious. I can't imagine. Why on earth would he write this? Jesus. He's in love with Lo. No, this isn't love. This is something else. Oh, my. He comes in, with his wheezing breath. I turn to him, and I yell.

"The Haze woman, the big bitch, the old cat, the obnoxious mamma, the--the old stupid Haze is no longer your dupe. She has--she has had enough. I've had enough of you, I've had enough of your lies! I've had enough of Dolores, that insufferable little girl you say you're in love with. I know it's not love. It can't be love. I know things are different in Europe, but this is America. We don't let our fathers touch their daughters! I won’t let you near her again, you big brute!"

"My dear," he says, “come here, and we’ll talk about it.”

“You’re a monster. You’re a detestable, abominable, criminal fraud. If you come near—I’ll scream out the window. Get back!” He tries to come near me. As if one of his disgusting sloppy kisses would change things.

“You’re the monster,” he mutters. I pretend not to hear.

“I am leaving tonight. This is all yours. Only you’ll never never see that miserable brat again.” He left, and I place a call to Leslie Tomson.

“Leslie, could you please call my home and tell my husband that I’m dead?”

“Who is this?”

“Charlotte Haze.”

“Oh. Yes. I suppose I can.”

“Thank you, goodbye.” I hang up, and open the sideboard. There is a replica of me. If Humbert can make up his Quilty, then I can have a wax replica. I run into the street, stand her up, and run, with my bag. Someone will hit her soon enough.

Post for 10/24

Danielle and I have been collaboratively assigned Nabokov's poem "The Ballad of Longwood Glen" as signifying something about Nabokov's themes, and narrative quirks, in reflecting Lolita. The poem is typically Nabokovian in a number of ways.

First, and most obviously, is the reflection (and parody) of folk tales. The piece is about a father who (never having climbed a tree) goes into the tree, to find a ball in a tree, never to return. This is fantastical in the same way a fairy tale, and almost seems like a cautionary tale without a moral, or an invocation of caution in its audience. This isn't much unlike Lolita in the sense that Humbert loves fairy tales, (as messed up as they are) and in fact, is constantly creating "real life" (whatever that means in this book) parallels between his life and fairy tales.

Secondly, is the fun Nabokov has creating a puzzle for his readers. The poem seems, to me, really to be a poetic reflection of his statement that good art places not characters against one another, but rather the author against the reader. In this reading, Art, (you see what I'm saying?) is symbolic of Art, and the people at the bottom of the tree try to analyze, try to unpack, and try to understand where Art went, but are unable to. Art places itself against the reader, and hides itself. Lolita is a sparring match. It's wonderful, though difficult and elusive. Not only is Humbert Humbert's reliability completely questionable, but the whole story forces you to either (in my opinion) misread him, or you are forced to have complicated feelings about him. And like Joyce's Ulysses, there are no arguments that hold up, unchallenged. Nabokov has the humanity, or rather, the understanding of the complexity of humanity that reflects Humbert Humbert, not as an archetype, but rather, as a person.

Thirdly, the piece is very clearly structured, and the aesthetics, and the "rules" of the game are very clear. The poem is written in AA BB CC format. This is, perhaps, a variation from Lolita in a certain way. Part of the fun of Lolita, is that it's a game we don't know the rules to. But, the way the poem and Lolita are connected, is through the fact that there are very much rules that are tightly followed by the author. I think about Nabokov's insistence that he is in control of his novels. He is in control of his writing, micromanaging, and being hyper selective with every word.

There are a number of other small details that are typically Nabokovian, (the doppelgänger names of Paul and Pauline, the judgemental narrator, the importance of names, the use of epic language, the frequent appearance of cars) that are more nitty-gritty, and perhaps less interesting for the greater picture of understanding Nabokov as an author and elusive figure overall.

Post for 10/22

I really liked the Winston article we had to read for Tuesday's class. It is interested, as I am, in the intersection between humanity and the fictionality of the story. However, the element I hadn't really considered, is the way Humbert fetishizes and tries to imitate fiction. I had thought about it more in terms of "lying" and "truth." But Humbert's problem is that he can't separate fact from fiction, right? Right. He can't separate fact from fiction, because he won't let himself accept the harsh realities. Instead, he tries to fictionalize his life to make things better than they were. I had always seen this as connecting to others. I had never really thought of Humbert's lying as (possibly) being entirely self-serving. I suppose, for all my rhetoric of "understanding others complexly" I was just thinking of Humbert as so uncomplicatedly bad, that I suppose I didn't consider that he really may be telling the story (and occasionally not telling the truth) really for himself. Almost telling the story as an act of repenting. And in fact, the final bit really comes close to that idea. The truth is that if we can agree that Humbert Humbert can't keep fact from fiction (not a particularly daring thesis) than it would be obvious to me that Humbert is telling the story to seek a redemption.

Humbert Humbert cannot separate fact from fiction. This is his fatal flaw. He wants everything to be perfect. He wants everything to fit in the neat, beauty of prose. Life, however, resists narrative structure, and this is Humbert Humbert's problem. He is trying to put the messiness, and complication of life into the simplicity of fiction. It doesn't work. It won't work. And that's the problem with his framework of thought. Not at all unlike cinderella's sisters, he tries to cut the heels off reality to make his reality fit into the shoe of fiction, or of prose. However, by doing this he ignores the complexity of life. Of his, less, but more importantly of Lolita's. He's so set on making everything perfect, and fable-like, that he's ignoring the reality of the situation. He doesn't realize how he's destroying Lolita's life, because he refuses to see the messiness, and contradictions of her personhood, due to his desire, or incapability to see the world outside the frame of a traditional narrative. Relevantly, Winston says here, "Humbert's solipsistic imagination refuses to acknowledge the individuality of the girls he loves or to allow them freedom to shape their own lives" (424).  This is so much what I'm trying to say. Humbert is telling us his story, not his life. Whether or not he can tell the difference is a different story.

Post for 10/17

I'm still dealing with and unpacking the Roth. (In a sidenote, I loved that Roth couldn't tell that John Ray Jr. wasn't a "real" editor." I find the fictionality of that character so absolutely paramount to this book. I wonder how Roth would react upon realizing the falsehood of the character.) I really like Roth's conceptions of reality, fiction, and the way Nabokov blurs the boundaries of both. I think, if we follow Roth's idea, (or perhaps it was Appel's) that the characters  that the most virtuous characters are the ones who are able to balance the the "real" as well as the "fictional" worlds. Roth goes on to discuss (rightly so,) that Humbert Humbert is completely incapable of balancing these two. This ends up destroying him. What I think is sort of interesting about this, is that this makes Lolita a tragedy, in a fairly traditional sense. Humbert Humbert, incapable of both keeping track of reality or fiction, is fatally flawed. Humbert can't remember or understand the difference between a reality or fiction. So, what makes that interesting, is the idea that Humbert may be honest, and also not accurately tell the story.  This slips into the idea of the subjectivity of truth. I just read "Six Characters in Search of an Author" for another class, and I have since been thinking about the way the two works deal with "reality" by creating a "real" infrastructure around the story. I think about the idea of the difference between Truth and truth. Facts vs. truth. I don't really have the feeling that Humbert intentionally lies very much, because I think he does not have the appropriate grip on what is and is not real, what is right and what is wrong. I don't know. It's all so complicated, and difficult. I keep trying to work and re-work these ideas, and they so often don't follow through.

More than the how, which Roth goes rather deeply into, I'm more interested in the why. What is the point? Why does Nabokov play with reality and fiction? What should Humbert's inability to sort reality from fiction say about us as people? Is Nabokov just playing a game to say that the best way to go about things is to be able to neatly separate "reality" from "fiction"? What a horribly secular thing to think. What a horribly separatist thing that is to say. If we can agree that Humbert Humbert is being honest, despite how often he lies, than wouldn't it be fair to say that we are all full of massive subjectivities, and that Nabokov is trying to say that we should both keep our realities in place, as well as acknowledging our own fictions, and the realities and fictions of others? I don't know if that question made any sense.