In Which The Pattern Shows Through the Wingcases of the Pupa

The Master's Voice

I have always had a number of parts lined up in case the muse failed. A lepidopterist exploring fabulous jungles came first. Then there was the chess grand master, then the tennis ace with an unreturnable service, then the goalie saving a historical shot, and finally, finally, the author of a pile of unknown writings - Pale Fire, Lolita, Ada - that my heirs discover and publish.

- Vladimir Nabokov in a 1977 BBC interview

...turning to the title-page butterfly, its head is that of a small tortoise, and its pattern that of a common Cabbage White butterfly (whereas the insect in my poem is clearly described as belonging to a group of small blue butterflies with dotted undersides), which is as meaningless...as would be a picture of a tuna fish on the jacket of Moby Dick. I want to be quite clear and frank: I have nothing against stylization, but I do object to stylized ignorance.

- Nabokov, 1959 to publisher

I do have a story for you - but it is still in my head; quite complete, however; ready to emerge; the pattern showing through the wingcases of the pupa.

- Nabokov, 1946 letter to Katharine A. White

June 12, 1951

Dear Irofessor Finley,

Many t anks for your delig tful letter. Yes, I think would be able to arrange a course of t e general tyoe you suggest, orovided you allow me some individual latitude. In my lectures I emo asize t e artistic side of literature. I visualize a course t at would not clas wit your conceot of t e connections between narrative genres. It would deal wit questions of structure, develooment of tec nique, t emes (in t e sense of 't ematic lines"), and imagery and magic and style. I certainly could link uo to my study of nineteent century fiction wit t ematic lines running t rough such initial masteroices as t e Iliad or te Slovo; but my main ouroose would be to analyze suc artistic structures as Mansfield Iark (and its fairy-tale oattern), Bleak ouse (and its c ild-and-bird t eme), Anna Karenin (and its dream-and-deat symbols), ten t e "transformatino" t eme, as old as t e oldest myt s, in one lumo consisting of t ree stories (Gogol's Overcoat, Stevenson's Jekyll and yde and Kafka's Metamoro sis), and finally the jardins suoerooses of Iroust's style in is first volume Swann's Way. If t is is too muc, eit er Bleak or Mansfield may be sacrificed. It seems to me t at t is orogram does not really deviate from yours since in the long run it deals with t e istorical evolution of symbols, of images, of ways of seeing t ings and conveying one's vision. After all, Homer, and Flaubert, and Gogol, and Dickens, and Iroust are all members of my family. I only hooe t at t e "added stiooend" will be adequate - if, of course, my course outline meets with your aooroval.

In any case I am looking forward to seeing a lot of you and Harry Levin next soring.

Sincerely yours,

Vladimir Nabokov

I.S. T is tyoewriter is falling aoart but a new one is on its way.

Dear Laughlin,

Would you be interested in publishing a timebomb that I have finished putting together? It is a novel of 459 typewritten pages.

If you would like to see it, the following precautions would have to be observed:

First of all, I would have to have your word that you alone would read it. Everything else could be settled later. You would further have to give me an address where the MS could reach you personally and directly. This is a very serious matter for me, as you will understand after reading the work.

Sincerely,

Vladimir Nabokov

Laughlin was out of the country and unable to read the typescript of Lolita.

March 12, 1955

Dear Mr. Epstein,

Here is a short list of works which ought to be retranslated and which might be presented in the following form:

I. A volume which might be titled "Three Duels", and which would contain:

Pushkin's THE PISTOL SHOT

Lermontov's PRINCESS MARY

Chehov's THE SINGLE COMBAT.

2. "Three Fantasies"  - a trio of fantastic tales -

Pushkin's THE QUEEN OF SPADES

Gogol's THE NOSE

Doestoevski's THE DOUBLE (by far the best thing Dostoevski ever wrote)

My favorite project, however, is Lermontov's THE HERO OF OUR TIME, a novel consisting of five stories (of which PRINCESS MARY is one).

If you are interested in any of these works, I shall explain in more detail what is wrong with the old translations (for instance, with Yarmonlinski's "The Pistol Shot" or Guerney's "The Queen of Spades"). My protege is none other than my son who will be graduated from Harvard this spring. He is a young Russian scholar and a budding American author in his own right. He has done some very creditable translations for me, and I would undertake to control and revise and work on the lines suggested here.

Sincerely yours,

Vladimir Nabokov

1955 corrections to the manuscript of LolitaNovember 28th, 1964

Dear Mr. Hitchcock,

Many thanks for your letter. I find both your ideas very interesting. The first would present many difficulties for me because I do not know enough about American security matters or methods, or how the several intelligence bureaus work, separately and together.

Your second idea is quite acceptable to me. Given a complete freedom (as I assume you intend to give me) I think I could turn it into a screenplay. But there would be a matter of time. What delays did you have in mind? I am at the present very busy winding up several things at once. I could devote some thought to the screenplay this summer but could hardly settle down to work on it yet. Please let me know what are your ideas about this.

In the meantime, I, too, would like to give you a short resume of two ideas of my own. You will find them, very badly jotted down, on the separate sheet attached to this letter. Please let me know what you think of them. If you like them, we might discuss their development.

It was good talking to you on the telephone.

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

Vladimir Nabokov

I.

A girl, a rising star of not quite the first magnitude, is courted by a budding astronaut. She is slightly condescending to him; has an affair with him but may have other lovers, or lover, at the same time. one day he is sent on the first expedition to a distant star; goes there and makes a successful return. Their positions have not changed. He is the most famous man in the country while her starrise has come to a stop at a moderate level. She is only too glad to have him now, but soon she realizes that he is not the same as he was before his flight. She cannot make out what the change is. Time goes, and she becomes concerned, then frightened, then panicky. I have more than one interesting denouement for this plot.

Hitchcock replied that this idea was not in his genre.

II.

While ignorant of the workings of American intelligence, I have gathered considerable information regarding those of the Soviets.

For some time now I have been thinking of writing the story of a defector from behind the Iron Curtain to the United States. The constant danger he is in, the constant necessity to hide and be on the lookout for agents from his native land bent on kidnapping or killing him.

I would have this man meet a benevolent American couple who would offer him the security of their Western ranch. But these would turn out to belong to certain pro-Soviet organizations and would betray him to his pursuers. I have in mind some marvellous scenes at the ranch and a very tragic ending.

Hitchcock responded that this idea had been used for The Iron Curtain (1948).

Download the unabridged audiobook of Lolita here.

In Which We Read of William Gass' Splendid Idea

The Division of Zero

According to Arthur Saltzman, William Gass's response to a request from Washington University to collect his papers "has attained folkoric dimensions among those associated" with the collection. He even did drafts of the response, which are now housed at the university. Now enjoy this crafty bit of American correspondence:

gass' self portraitDear Miss Van Duyn,

The Lebowitz do sweet irrational things.

Certainly Stan did mention the matter of my mss to me, and your library's interest in collecting them. I remember some of the names that were on the list he gave me, and I was there all right, lying between Ralph Ellison and John Hawkes like a valley squeezed between two foresty knees. Barth and Powers squared the ends off, and Bellow and Nabokov had their thumbs up. Well naturally it was very funny and fitted Boswell's Elkin perfectly; for whom, in his own person, could Elkin solicit now but the uncelebrious, the drearily non-famous, and the sorrow middle-knowns? I could hear him slap his golden thigh with glee when his fellow conspirator at your library, to whom he told me to address myself, showed him how the hook had drawn my gizzard through my teeth. I wrote him as much.

barth

But you seem to be in earnest. I can only conclude that you are all mad, for I could not bring myself to approach some Lolly Hankins and a simple such as I am, though he were the father of a hundred, puddinpassled, barky pekineses, and deep plumdumplings, even in the high front line of duty, to make this kind of request, unless I had been seized with a Hettie Green-like bibliomania. As a futures list, too, Elkin's wore a certain antic look, warning me against swallowing. Ford's a lively dead old master. Beckett's no bet - he came home first, paid off handsomely, and is, I hope, stuffing himself in the stable.

It is certainly a splendid idea - put peaches in thy mouth, money in thy purse, peace in thy soul, honey in thy horn, and papers in thy vault - but its success depends on your guessing right at least some of the time. It will scarcely distinguish you to have the largest - and only - collection of Solly Wallow in the country. So I must tell you that there is at least one lame horse on your list. My agent, a determined and dedicated lady, has been trying to find a publisher for a number of mss. of mine, both short and long, without any success whatever.

Indeed, I haven't had an acceptance in two years. My production, never voluminous, has meanwhile ceased. It will begin again when my time yields some spaces, but circumstances have forced me to consider my writing the idlest of hobbies. You would no doubt find it embarrassing to withdraw your suggestion, so perhaps I should do your predicting for you and say no. I am pleased, naturally, that someone should make such a mistake in my favor, but consider - I have no proofs of books because I have no books; there are no translations for there are no translators; I have no letters from writers about my work because writers do not write me; I have no letters from editors, either, except those that say no; I have made no tapes, attended no workshops, conferences or symposia, and I have made only one public appearance; all I possess are dull and repetitious sheaves of typed or pen and pencilled papers representing my staggery attempts to cross a paragraph - and then imagine how many "scholars" are going to nose the gates of your vaults throating for an eyeful of the building of my prose (the Pharaoh passes in the distance wearing a cardboard hat and carrying a stone, a shovel, and a hose); and won't it be confounding to us all when your appraiser values my wads at $5.67 or whatever they might bring per lb? I'd fire both Leibowitz - charming but confused - and start over.

Of course you are welcome to the things I have, and to all of it if you want it. It would consist primarily of worked over drafts, and there is probably quite a lot considering the slenderness of what's emerged. Measured absolutely, however...I don't know. And would you want it decently arranged? Some sort of order can be given to it, but beyond a certain point I doubt that I can even imagine what version was the original and what came after that, and what after that, and so on.

I'll make a tape if you wish, though you've heard me read.

Putting restrictions on the use of such papers would be like dividing zero.

I am very interested, though, in the progress of your plan. Think of my scratches, filed alongside Ford's, receiving radiation. Ford's mss would be a great thing to have and I hope you get them, and since you seem to want them, I hope you get all the junk you're asking for.

Give my best to all of Washington's good people. I think I remember almost everybody.

Bill Gass

Images by Frank Di Piazza.

photograph by frank di piazza

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"Tailgate" - Colt Ford (mp3)

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