Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (I Love Book Club #4, starts 26 September)

I already have way too much on my plate but I want to read this just so I can raise a defense

But cryptic crosswords are soluble once you are accustomed to the rules, whereas this thing isn't- it's an artist's blueprint of an infernal machine to hang on a museum wall but not to be constructed.

Can we do something like Angels And Demons instead next month?

james are you thinking of this?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/be/Duchamp_LargeGlass.jpg/388px-Duchamp_LargeGlass.jpg

I haven't read Michael Wood's book in ages but I don't think any critic regards Ada as a major work, pinefox.

The Large Glass aka The Bride...? Yeah, except that I like that, but not necessarily the umpteenth riff on it, the joke got old at some point. Somebody said in that Calvin Tomkins bio, maybe Tomkins himself, that when Duchamp did it first, he did it last.

Come to think of it, wasn't one of the things the late Richard Hamilton was famous for was restoring The Large Glass?

Somehow this thread and the Lou Reed Collabo threads have merged and the phrase "electricity comes from other planets" has taken on a new meaning.

Cryptic crossword doesn't work; the fun of the right cryptic is in balanced contest between setter and solver; 'fair'. The video game analogy is nearer, but it seems to me more like being trapped in a longstanding family parlour game, where, rudely, you are ignored. Watching someone else's way of passing the time. (and yeah we know vn knows this & comments on it, & the book scratches at its solipsism, but is the game worth that candle? I lean no)

Well said.

Alfred and the pinefox, Wood describes this book as a late work as opposed to a mature work, meaning that there is still plenty of ambition but the skill isn't there any more to back it up

http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1969/1101690523_400.jpg

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljyy368Iky1qdcdf4o1_400.jpg

http://www.fathom.com/course/10701032/104_ada.jpg

I haven't read Michael Wood's book in ages but I don't think any critic regards /Ada/ as a major work, pinefox.

"the closest the second half of the twentieth century has come to matching Ulysses" according to Brian Boyd.

(Don't quote that to disprove you Alfred, more out of fascination with boyd's Nabokov idolatry. He must know that his blindness to vn's faults makes him seem like a vn creation. maybe that's his point? OH THIS HALL OF MIRRORS)

"Brian Boyd" is an anagram for "Ian d'Boy"

On the whole, however, the novelist is pleased by the reception of "Ada," a story involving incest, among other things, which was published last year. "Except for a number of helpless little hacks who were unable to jog beyond the first chapters, American reviewers have been remarkably perceptive in regard to my most cosmopolitan and poetic novel.

"As to the British press, the observation of a few discerning critics were also most welcome; the buffoons turned out to be less clever than usual, whilst my regular guide, Mr. Philip Toynbee, seemed even more distressed by "Ada" than he had been by "Pale Fire."

NYT

15x15 = 225? Looks like maybe he WAS trying to make a crossword.

Anyway, maybe Part II will be better but at this point it's making every other overstuffed and overlong pretentious novel look good, the same way Pomplamoose make every other twee act look good.

I haven't read Michael Wood's book in ages but I don't think any critic regards Ada as a major work, pinefox.

Wood does indeed raise his mighty thumb in favor of Ada, iirc - most of my library is in storage, so I can't completely qualify that. His book on N. is amazing, but the fact that Ada gets all applause and The Gift is only afforded, like, three mentions (if that) has always irked me.

Can only find one mention of that last: "I have concentrated on Nabokov's works in English, but the Russian works, especially The Defence and The Gift, have also been much on my mind." Don't know if we chose to write about Ada because it was a personal favorite or because of its importance as door-stopping career-capper.

Thinking maybe strongo was right and I should read something else I never got to, maybe one of the short stories like "The Vane Sisters."

Many of his short stories sculpt with greater detail and menace the nameless terror in which his novels thrive but sometimes comes off rather chic. "The Vane Sisters" is a good example; my students always get off on "Signs and Symbols."

Those two have their own chapter in the Michael Wood book, Alfred. Well, almost, they share it with Bend Sinister.

Where is the love for Invitation to a Beheading?

Those two have their own chapter in the Michael Wood book, Alfred. Well, almost, they share it with Bend Sinister.

I liked how Wood, iirc, pretty much tosses out any actual discussion of Bend Sinister's contents to focus entirely upon the last fifth - the climax involving the bureaucratic "mishandling" of the son's detention.

Of course, I'm going entirely by memory.

Well, this a Nabokov thread, so...

Wood keen to emphasise the painful humanity of Bend Sinister iirc, rather than N's tricks so-called.

Invitation to a Beheading was one of the first I read. I loved it tho at the time I was reading it in a context of Beckett and Camus (being a walking cliche of a moody teenager). That is to say existential and sensational solitude or isolation. I'd be interested to read it again having read more N.

Ada almost insufferable to read, and yet and yet, there's a certain impressiveness to the structures - esp the topography.

A lot of his writing makes butterflies out of the grub-like mundane (missing trains, misunderstanding, car drives, spilt milk), this does the opposite - takes a parody of Russian romance and smashes it with a sledgehammer, deliberately overburdens it to kill it.

That is very well said by Fizzles. Not that I've read any of the books he mentions save MW's.

I read the first 5 chapters but I'm taking a break from this. I don't understand half of it, and from Ada Online, a lot of it isn't rewarding even when you understand it.

Skimmed part I, but ended up also taking a break and reading those two excellent stories mentioned upthread

Should've got this on Saturday but the packet was "too big for my letterbox" - which I'm sceptical about - and returned to the sorting office. Went there today to pick it up and they didn't have it - apparently they have a ridiculous scheme where instead of returning it directly the postman posts it back to the sorting office. So now I either have to go through the hassle of hauling my ass down there again, or arrange redelivery which won't be till thurs, or ring up and try and cause a fuss.

the other day i had to go to the sorting office to pick up a copy of the new yorker that was apparently too big to fit in my letter box. i get it every week + this has never happened before.

there's a 50 page thread on my local forum complaining about the utter ineptitude of the place. i had vowed never to go there again, i normally get big packages delivered to work but books usually go through the letterbox fine.

Just a few notes on the first 5 chapters.

The second Veen gets introduced as Durak Veen a.k.a. Red Veen. From the next paragraph onwards, the book calls him Dan. Where did that come from? I was flipping the pages back and forth, trying to find out if it was the same guy.

The references to Terra start out confusing and start to make sense after some exposition. But I was left wondering why the visions occur, and that's something the book doesn't answer according to the Ada Online notes. But it felt like I had missed that detail in the middle of all the confusing references. The style got in the way of some important details here.

The intelligent, witty dialog between Ada and Van at the end of chapter 1 was the best part of the beginning. Unfortunately chapters 2-5 didn't have any of this.

do you not find them rather priggish, abanana? I mean even allowing for the 'editorial fashioning' narrative voice?

(And several times I've felt that the problems with this book are almost entirely to do with the narrative voice - then immediately feel that is severely understating matters)

again, it's remarkable how bad this book apparently is.

imagine if the FAP tomorrow was all about it!

So aside from "Signs and Symbols" and "The Vane Sisters" what other stories should I read?

"That in Aleppo Once."

Thanks!

Should've got this on Saturday but the packet was "too big for my letterbox" - which I'm sceptical about - and returned to the sorting office. Went there today to pick it up and they didn't have it - apparently they have a ridiculous scheme where instead of returning it directly the postman posts it back to the sorting office. So now I either have to go through the hassle of hauling my ass down there again, or arrange redelivery which won't be till thurs, or ring up and try and cause a fuss.

― ledge, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 4:19 AM (18 hours ago)

"Brian Boyd" is an anagram for "Ian d'Boy"

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, September 25, 2011 2:22 PM Bookmark

No it isn't

I can see that if you had written a biography of the guy this book might have more to offer. Actually is that bio worth reading? What about Stacey Schiff's Vera?

So aside from "Signs and Symbols" and "The Vane Sisters" what other stories should I read?

also "la veneziana", "cloud, castle, lake", "terra incognita", i like "lance".

you'd expect him to be good at titles, i guess, but he really is.

I finished it! Go me.

Couldn't see any way through other than a determined gallop.

Don't have much of use to say. I'll stick to part one.

Trick-book readings of what's going on here - inside-out version of a Russian romance, strangulation of VN's own childhood paradise fixation, an essay on narcissism (Lolita reading - Van turning a grubby bout of incest (another sort of narcissism) into jewel fiction - a mirror for VN's own process with his paradise lost), elaborate reader troll - would be more persuasive or engaging if it were two hundred pages shorter.

His prose is a bit shot (unless he wants us to think Van is a second-rate writer). He's not seeing the world as well, & falls back way too much on allit and assonance, the multilingual & pointless allusion. Lost his ability to make a knight's move, something surprising in his prose.

Almost feels like a bet on the future - 'when you're over all those novels with meaning and psychology, my magic romance will be loved'.

Some great passages - claustrophobic-obsessive adolescent love-lust stuff snaps together in places; i'm a bit 'c'mon' at the world-building, but then he'll roll out some lovely, funny paragraph of invention (don't have copy to hand to find one).

Really not funny, though, mostly.

Bit rushed. I'll leave it there.

"Brian Boyd" is an anagram for "Ian d'Boy"

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, September 25, 2011 2:22 PM Bookmark

No it isn't

― Disraeli Geirs (Hurting 2), Wednesday, September 28, 2011 2:52 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

erroneous anagrams we go ever further into the hall of mirrors. I just thought it was a Brain/Body thing, but maybe that's too obvious for Nabokov, prob a red herring.

"vn's litpinions aren't random though; they're just kinda narrowminded. he dislikes Ideas because he finds them pushy and misshapen (and because he was expelled from eden by a political movement that loved utilitarian writers like chernyshevsky so much it mandated them) and thinks the writer ought to be creating a Convincing Otherworld that Makes The Spine Sob. he's good at seeing through snobbishness around stuff like dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, stuff that's eerie and unplaceably affecting, and he's (quietly) well aware that such stuff, like his own work, gets its power from tinkering with and constructing new permutations of actual conditions under which actual people live their lives -- he's not really a hermit. but he's less good at understanding that since real people really engage earnestly with Ideas all the time, books that do the same thing aren't only a necessary part of the big general ongoing mimesis/exegesis project literature is doing on experience but actually capable of being as affecting, even if not as elegant, as the stuff that uses its characters' ideas mostly as jokes, or lures to doom. even if it doesn't make vn's personal spine sob."

I can imagine Dostoevsky making this argument if he and VN ever met, but then Nabokov would probably make some well-crafted snide comment and Dostoevsky would just stand there and look sad.

Just like in the board description!

i'm a bit 'c'mon' at the world-building, but then he'll roll out some lovely, funny paragraph of invention

She saw giant flying sharks with lateral eyes taking barely one night to carry pilgrims through black ether across an entire continent from dark to shining sea

I liked this.

Yes, I liked that one too.

Six chapters in, good lord, i will be surprised if i finish. "The novel opens like a sack full of exotic frogs, alive with movement and color, each little flash of life slippery and ready to bound off for somewhere unknown", says boyd, i think it opens more like an old drawer jumbled full of random discarded objects, obscure of purpose, unwanted and forgotten.

The allusions seem to be becoming less dense and opaque now the main relationship and setting have been established (no small thanks to boyd's notes tbh) but the level of irrelevant descriptive detail is still overwhelming. This from Van's first visit to Ardis Hall:

On the first floor, a yellow drawing room hung with damask and furnished in what the French once called the Empire style opened into the garden and now, in the late afternoon, was invaded across the threshold by the large leaf shadows of a paulownia tree (named, by an indifferent linguist, explained Ada, after the patronymic, mistaken for a second name or surname of a harmless lady, Anna Pavlovna Romanov, daughter of Pavel, nicknamed Paul-minus-Peter, why she did not know, a cousin of the non-linguist’s master, the botanical Zemski, I’m going to scream, thought Van).

He is not alone. A (very) short while later in the tour he is "intolerably bored". These particular bits of seeming self-reference go uncommented by Boyd.