Jonathan Orsi

English 431

Nabokov.

Master of Puppets

“Ye airs and winds, ye elves of hills, of brooks of woods alone, of standing lake, and of the night approach ye everyone!” Medea invokes the unseen spirits, she conjures her orchestration, and with her powers she “makes the calm seas rough and makes the rough seas plain, And cover all the sky with clouds and chase them thence again.” With these words, we soar back to Ovid. Entranced and enchanted, with dancing visions we are spellbound. The poetic performance, the spectacle before us, has been composed and conducted with careful wit. Through Ovid the Gods speak, through his characters and stories speak Ovid, singing the soul’s song of metamorphosis. This surrogate storytelling reappears throughout time; it serves the necessary illusion of production. Much as Shakespeare’s theater is not only a stage for his actors but a stage for his own voice. As with our poetic puppeteer Nabokov, we are at witness to literary ventriloquism. We never read Nabokov ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’ as it were, rather we read the vicarious voice of Nabokov, portrayed by, and through his invented puppets. With his masterful arts Nabokov creates characters and worlds, dictating and directing them with tethers, tied tight with poetry.

Nabokov uses literature as a very thin, yet extravagantly woven screen between us the reader, and himself the author. It is on this veil Nabokov conveys his voice and ideas, the projection: an irresistible image of literary prose. The screen though, keeps separate the audience to the true authorial voice, or creator. It is if we are trapped in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and we are only given shadows of Nabokov’s figure. The term shadow here, should be taken as a grim analogy, for the shadows cast by Nabokov are some of the mot colorful and vivacious yet thrown onto the page.

What is essential to understand, is that though the dialogue and ideas, the entire extent of written material has come from Nabokov’s hand, it is intended to be read and understood from the narrators mouth. Albeit fictitious, and entirely fabricated, the narrator speaking for Nabokov speaks with careful and intentional accents, and varied perceptions. It is almost as if each narrator applies their own filter to Nabokov’s voice, like holding a candle behind a piece of colored glass. To understand the intention or simply to recognition the placement of this glass is paramount.

In many ways, Nabokov’s characters could be considered a medium, especially now, in reference to the mediums between the dead and living. Crossing over however, the voice must pass through subtle distortions. Michael Wood discusses this veiling in is critical series off essays, The Magician’s Doubts stating, “Vladimir Nabokov himself is not going to show up anywhere here: there are only impersonations.(109)” This masking however, should not be considered or confused with any type of weakness, rather it is his greatest strength. It is these mouthpieces, these elaborate characters we are enthralled with. There is some debate on the likeability of characters such as Humbert, Kinbote, and Hugh (a rapist, a narcissist, and a murder respectively) but it is the elegance with which Nabokov manipulates and maneuvers these puppets, that creates and harbors our affinity with them.

Nabokov’s characters even seem to take on the role of authorship as well. With Pale Fire, the John Shade services the role of poet. It is from John Shade’s dreary and macabre life that the poem Pale Fire flowers. The invented character has been granted life by the creator. Life breathed into him by means of flowing language John Shade is created as he is, as he has been. Like a Bukowski poem Shade is, “Born like this, into this.” The characters are created, given life, but they: their history and personage are entirely controlled. Deplorable behavior and all, Nabokov’s characters are entirely intentional and entirely at bay to Nabokov’s direction. In his book, The Magician’s Doubts, Michael Wood expands upon this, invoking Socrates when he speaks to Phaedrus,

Writing you know, has this strange quality about it, which makes it really like painting: the painter’s products stand before us quite as though they were alive; but if you question them, they maintain a solemn silence. So, too, with written words: you might think they spoke as though they made sense, but if you ask them anything about what they are saying, if you wish and explanation, they go on telling you the same thing over and over forever.

Wood, through Socrates is enunciating this idea that, though the characters take and lead their own directional lives, they are still constrained by and to Nabokov’s artistic vision. Wood also beckons Humbert on this matter when he discusses opening King Lear, finding that, no matter how many time the story is opened, it shall never change, “never shall we find the king banging his tankard in high revelry.” As much as Shakespeare and Nabokov give freedom and life to their invented characters, they are still very much shackled or strung to the authors will.

Nabokov though, doesn’t simply cast his figure in colorful shades of shadow; he sheds authorship onto his them. With Pale Fire, we are handed a poet and commentator and we clearly see the discussion of these relationships flowing throughout the text. With deeper inquiry however, we see that it is this displacement of authorship, these fabricated voices, these viceroys of literature, who not only flow through the text, but carry the entire burden.

In the novel Lolita however, we often forget or disassociate Humbert with authorial voice. So entrapped are we with powerful prose and a seductive story we lose sight and recognition that this text is Humbert’s dairy-rewritten- from memory, in a jail cell no less! Humbert has succeeded in seducing our sense, as if in a form of literary Stockholm Syndrome, have become endeared to our captor. We hang on every word, invest trust in the text, and begin to pity the pederast.

With belief established in the manuscript, we again, are audience to another production, this time with Humbert conducting. As the text is meant to be understood as a recount of events, we recognize Humbert as the storyteller. He uses lofty language, humor, alliteration, poetry, pity, a whole plethora of devices to enchant the reader. The chase scenes, love scenes, even murder scenes have all been orchestrated by Humbert to romanticize and elevate himself out of despise.

Humbert employs as cast of characters to carry his story. Lolita, Charlotte, Quilty the elusive yet omnipresent Audrey McFate, even Gordon, the described “haggard masturbator” perform in Humbert’s production. This notion of director/puppeteer is glanced at by Humbert himself on page 57 of Lolita, the preamble for the infamous davenport scene.

Main character: Humbert the Hummer. Time: Sunday morning in June. Place: Sunlit living room. Props: old, candy-stripped davenport, magazines, phonograph, Mexican knickknacks (the late Mr. Harold E. Haze-God bless the good man—had engendered my darling at the siesta hour in a blue-washed room, on a honeymoon trip to Vera Cruz, and Mementoes, among these Dolores, were all over the place).

While this may be more of an example of Humbert’s humor, or creative wit, it shed’s an introspective light to the “reality” of the text.

The above-mentioned “reality” may be better suited with one or two more scratches of quotation. Frame outward: here is where the trick occurs. The moment we connect with, or accept Humbert, we have been subject to Nabokov’s slight of hand. Duped in the old double take. If Humbert’s manuscriptal-mirage has fooled us, then Nabokov has done it twice over. What we are witness to is a literary ventriloquism, or as Michael Wood tags it, “a verbal vaudeville, a series of literary impersonations performed by the author.” It is almost as if Nabokov has reincarnated himself into his text, appearing as panting pedophile.

This authorial self-imposition, mirrors and re-mirrors itself from Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest. Nabokov can be seen as Prospero, “by his art…put[ting] the wild waters in this roar. (1.2.1-2)” Like Prospero, Nabokov manipulates his characters with seductive style. The characters are given the illusion of independence, but are all the while at bay to the tempest’s will. Though Nabokov never fully articulates this relationship, Prospero unveils himself, exposing the wires of control, “You demi-puppets that by moonshine do the green sour ringlets make…weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed the noontide sun, called forth the mutinous wind, and twixt the green sea and the azured vault set roaring war. (5.1.36-47)”

If another mirror is set in place however, we may be more attuned to say that Humbert would make a better Prospero. Certainly when we remind ourselves -as we have done earlier -that the text of Lolita is Humbert’s creation, and recognize the characters therein are subject to his potent art. The preference of Humbert to Prospero especially highlighted when it is considered that both Prospero and Humbert are visible and present throughout text. Though they create the world in which they live, both Prospero and Humbert are still very much characters. Living on, in an even further reflected sky however, fly the real conductors.

If we follow the marionette strings, upward, ascending off the page and out of the text, we see the true puppeteer. The stage becomes visible, the characters drawn back to the page. Exposed, but never reduced. The performance is instead disbanded, as Prospero decrees:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made of.(4.1.148-158)

We may be freed from the story itself, but we shall never be freed from the Nabokov’s enchantment. The moment we enter his world of texts, the moment we are witness to his performances, we become entwined. Never shall we become detached, never will the strings split for fray, instead we will forever remain suspended in disbelief and awe in poetic pageantry that is Nabokov’s work.

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest 3.2.148-156

Works Cited

Wood, Michael. The Magician's Doubts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Shakespeare, William and David Bevington. The Tempest. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.

paper (whole)

I am posting this with some what bitter sweet feelings.
I had written the entire paper, specifically the second half and saved it on a flash drive, i was supposed to have that flash drive returned to me this weekend, but i should have expected this-as everything this week it seems to be a bust. So i've spent the last few hours rewriting (Humbert Humbert style -from memory- in the jail cell of my library desk job) the second half to my paper. In Nabokovian fashion i feel this to be my "the original of Laura" in that it is not edited, not what i really wanted to say, rather it should be burned than ever published. But alas, i needed to do it, its done, so i reluctantly post with tepid relief:

Note: for what ever reason, when copying and pasting some sort of problem occurs, so there may be italics missing or...something, i don't know why blogger can't handle the cut and past function, but it should be all there.

final thoughts. this was ecstacy

As the semester comes to a close, I feel I must take a note from James and thank everybody. I can honestly say that this has been one of if not the best class I have ever had. I mean this in part due to the material, but mostly due to the classmates and the instructor. I feel the same way reading classmates blogs as I do reading Nabokov’s work, It is impossible to reference any one blog or anyone fragment. I because I would never find a proper place to stop, I would simply have to rewrite them all. Even giving “props” to any of my classmates would essentially result in me writing the class list. So to you all: thank you, this was not simply a class, this was a temple.

When I first heard that the class was focusing on Nabokov instead of Wallace Steven, I believe I was a little worried. Russian writers conjure images of cold, sterile, dry writing. Little did I know the ecstasy that awaited me.

I liken this experience; my Nabokov to Humberts Lolita.

“and then, without the least warning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, half-naked, kneeling turning about on her knees, there was my Rivera love peering at me over dark glasses.”

My paper (a fragment)

I am still waiting on a flash drive to be returned to me which has the better half of my paper on it. All i am left with at present time (with approx 40 minutes to post) is what is saved on my roommates computer, but here is it, or some of it. and I will put the tail of it on hopefully later tonight

Jonathan Orsi

English 431

Nabokov.

Master of Puppets

“Ye airs and winds, ye elves of hills, of brooks of woods alone, of standing lake, and of the night approach ye everyone!” Medea invokes the unseen spirits, she conjures her orchestration, and with her powers she “makes the calm seas rough and makes the rough seas plain, And cover all the sky with clouds and chase them thence again.” With these words, we soar back to Ovid. Entranced and enchanted, with dancing visions we are spellbound. The poetic performance, the spectacle before us, has been composed and conducted with careful wit. Through Ovid the Gods speak, through his characters and stories speak Ovid, singing the soul’s song of metamorphosis. This surrogate storytelling reappears throughout time; it serves the necessary illusion of production. Much as Shakespeare’s theater is not only a stage for his actors but a stage for his own voice. As with our poetic puppeteer Nabokov, we are at witness to literary ventriloquism. We never read Nabokov ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’ as it were, rather we read the vicarious voice of Nabokov, portrayed by, and through his invented puppets. With his masterful arts Nabokov creates characters and worlds, dictating and directing them with tethers, tied tight with poetry.

Nabokov uses literature as a very thin, yet extravagantly woven screen between us the reader, and himself the author. It is on this veil Nabokov conveys his voice and ideas, the projection: an irresistible image of literary prose. The screen though, keeps separate the audience to the truth authorial voice, or creator. It is if we are trapped in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and we are only given shadows of Nabokov’s figure. The term shadow here, should be taken as a grim analogy, for the shadows cast by Nabokov are some of the mot colorful and vivacious yet cast on the page.

What is essential to understand, is that though the dialogue and ideas, the entire extent of written material has come from Nabokov’s hand, it is intended to be read and understood from the narrators mouth. Albeit fictitious, and entirely fabricated, the narrator speaking for Nabokov speaks with careful and intentional accents, and varied perceptions. It is almost as if each narrator applies their own filter to Nabokov’s voice, like holding a candle behind a piece of colored glass. To understand the intention or simply to recognition the placement of this glass is paramount.

In many ways, Nabokov’s characters could be considered a medium, especially now, in reference to the mediums between the dead and living. Crossing over however, the voice must pass through subtle distortions. Michael Wood discusses this veiling in is critical series off essays, The Magician’s Doubts stating, “Vladimir Nabokov himself is not going to show up anywhere here: there are only impersonations.(109)” This masking however, should not be considered or confused with any type of weakness, rather it is his greatest strength. It is these mouthpieces, these elaborate characters we are enthralled with. There is some debate on the likeability of characters such as Humbert, Kinbote, and Hugh (a rapist, a narcissist, and a murder respectively) but it is the elegance with which Nabokov manipulates and maneuvers these puppets, that creates and harbors our affinity with them.

Nabokov’s characters even seem to take on the role of authorship as well. With Pale Fire, the John Shade services the role of poet. It is from John Shade’s dreary and macabre life that the poem Pale Fire flowers. The invented character has been granted life by the creator. Life breathed into him by means of flowing language John Shade is created as he is, as he has been. Like a Bukowski poem Shade is, “Born like this, into this.” The characters are created, given life, but they: their history and personage are entirely controlled. Deplorable behavior and all, Nabokov’s characters are entirely intentional and entirely at bay to Nabokov’s direction. In his book, The Magician’s Doubts, Michael Wood expands upon this, invoking Socrates when he speaks to Phaedrus,

Writing you know, has this strange quality about it, which makes it really like painting: the painter’s products stand before us quite as though they were alive; but if you question them, they maintain a solemn silence. So, too, with written words: you might think they spoke as though they made sense, but if you ask them anything about what they are saying, if you wish and explanation, they go on telling you the same thing over and over forever.

Wood, through Socrates is enunciating this idea that, though the characters take and lead their own directional lives, they are still constrained by and to Nabokov’s artistic vision. Wood also beckons Humbert on this matter when he discusses opening King Lear, finding that, no matter how many time the story is opened, it shall never change, “never shall we find the king banging his tankard in high revelry.” As much as Shakespeare and Nabokov give freedom and life to their invented characters, they are still very much shackled or strung to the authors will.

Nabokov though, doesn’t simply cast his figure in colorful shades of shadow; he sheds authorship onto his them.

my presentation

This is not entirely necessary, because you have all already heard it, but i will post my script for the presentation, because -though i could never reach the true from- i had tried to impersonate Dr. Sexson in manner, and in summarizing my paper, which may be a better explanation, or a distillation of what i said in long winded form. anyway here it is.

This is the spring of 2011, I am already far underway teaching my capstone class for the semester. Some of you I see are in that class as well. Hands please? In which we are reading such books as Joyce’s Ullysess, we have just fnished the bahgvadgita! And we are primarily dealing with text that relate to this notion of the epiphany. That is to say Light bulbs!

Anyway I came here today to talk to you about a class I taught last year on the author Vladimir Nabokov. And this one student of mine Jon Orsi, not a particularly bright student but I granted him an A for the course Non the less. In fact I believe everyone in the class was awarded an A. You can hold me to that.

Well Jon wrote his final paper, and he was unfortunately unable to be here to present it. So I will fill in to summarize. His paper was entitled Master of Puppets, it dealt primarily with the idea of Nabokov as a sort of puppeteer. Creating the illusion of these fictitious authors all while tending the strings. Putting on a production to which we are witness. Which is essentially to say a discussion of authorial voice. He never got quite down to saying this but think I can safely say this is what he was getting at.

He likeness this to the notion of Plato’s allegory of the cave, that we the audience never see Nabokov himself clearly, instead as a shadow cast upon the wall. Shadow however, he claims is a dreary analogy, rather the gauze that separates the author and audience, is a rich and intricate tapestry. And it is the beauty and delicacy of this gauze that elevates Nabokov to such great heights. In fact I have always said that Nabokov offers more pleaser per square inch than any other writer.

Jon also likens Nabokov to Shakespeare’s Prospero. A character in his final play the Tempest. Prospero uses his powers (which are books) to sort of conduct and orchestrate a series of events, using other characters a sort of his actors or. Puppets? And this has widely been taken as a metaphor for Shakespeare himself.

Jon then argues maybe a better comparison would be Nabokov to Shakespeare, and characters such as Humbert Humbert to be his Prospero, because as we know ‘Lolita’ is Humberts diary. And we never can fully trust if Humerts characters are…what? Real! Or made up! Or if he is using them, manipulating them for his own means.

Anyway a very interesting paper, calling to question the productions that are Nabokov’s novels, what we are reading is sort of a puppet show put on with careful detail and extraordinary style. These fictitious Narrators perform as literary ventriloquism that add many layers of depth and complexity to what is extraordinarily beautiful writing.

a visual

(click to see larger view) try and check out the names and everything its some wild information.

I didn't really have time to explain my last blog and I don't really now, but i just thought of this Artist who is actually a friend of mine's uncle, who took money transactions between, governments, banks, organized crime syndicates, corporations and created these pieces of art with said information. here is a wiki link to him. Mark Lombardi I realize this doesn't really have to do with class, but i just thought this was an interesting image/ person. And now that its the end of the year, for any of my classmates who would even be reading this, i figure I'd give you something more on the entertainment side of things than the educational.
Note: one of this is actually on display at the MoMA
Now if only i had the time do do this with a copy of Lolita.

quick notes on Christina's & Riley's

I am at work right now so I don't really have time to expand on this idea, but hearing/ reading Riley's as well as Christina's I've been thinking a lot about this web of interconectivity within Nabokov's writing. Riley said that he had to punch out his cards -something i was overly cautious not to do with my library copy (library copy should be laminated)- but the idea, or the spatial recognition of having the cards spread out in front of you is really appealing to me. This would be an enormous project for the entire work of something like Lolita, but to see the entire script as an image, a piece of art, possibly with the silks of web spread and tied throughout the text would be, if at all possible one of the coolest things for this class (future MoMA exhibit)
Again, i wish i had time to articulate this point/idea more and give it some elan of it's own but I am just working with the raw idea that Nabokovs work is limited almost when we are given it in the "linear" fashion to which print is confined, we must in turn think and feel out the works. (which we have no problem doing) but to see this confinement broken would be beautiful. As Christina puts it in her paper, "Unlike ordinary writers, however, who may use words to illustrate concepts in a linear fashion (from word to idea), Nabokov manipulates words in a very different way, making them come alive through their varied interactions with one another."
I enthusiastically agree here, but my point is that in the novel form, we are quite literally restrained to the linear form, i just want to see what the image of it would be spatially... this sounds crazy i know, i suppose i don't really know what i'm talking about anymore, i think this semester has cracked me, but just picture it, maybe even try it. push out the note cards in your copy of The Original of Laura. tear the pages out of an old copy of Pale Fire
and Draw a 'web of sense' throughout. see what it looks like.

trasparent butterlfy

...annnd 21 blogs done. (just joking, i just thought this was a wicked cool picture. thought i'd throw it you guys)

things that are transparent

It now seems sort of redundant to talk about Transparent Things since it has passed, but we really did not seem to have enough, nor any time to discuss the work. The little time we did spend though, was beyond helpful in understanding the story especially when it came to narration/ authorial voice. Reading it after we discussed it, i felt spoiled and privileged because i could see and understand the idea -i suppose- behind it. The narrator(s). I am somewhat saddened by this, I wish I had been on top of it, read it before we talked about it, and discovered what was waiting for me through my own reading. But...as much as I'd like to say I am completely self confident, I am not entirely sure that i would have been capable of fully understanding the story were it not for Sexson/class/the blogs. And i realize how gracious i am of these things. that being said, with the aid of the teacher and fellow classmates: I loved Transparent Things and i got it! I feel i really understood and followed what and who was going on throughout the story. Although i did read the story twice on my own, having the class discussions prefacing the book served almost like pre-reading for me. again i realized how spoiled this made me, but that was simple the way the cards fell, and i appreciated the help.
Therefore, here are some commonplace notes i took while reading. I wrote them down either for my enjoyment of them on an aesthetic level -which most ever line is subject to- as well as their connection to the inevitable conclusion/ acknowledgment of omniscient narrator(s)

"Your ripped open the upper margin of the envelope. You added the beige dust it contained to the ruthlessly homogenized milk in your cup. You took a sip-and hurried to add sugar. But no sugar could improve the insipid, sad, dishonest taste." page 520

"The charm of the past Tense lay in its secrecy. Knowing Julia, he was quite sure she would not have told a chance friend about their affair-one sip among dozens of swallows." 520-521

"In fact at puberty sexual desire arises as a substitute for the desire to kill, which one normally fulfills in one's dreams." 531

"Did he ever by her a turtleneck sweater? No answer. Was he annoyed when she found it too tight at the throat?" 531.

Tha Groupz.

Earlier this evening I found myself amidst a heated argument with my friends. As usual, this flowered seemingly from nothing, more or less for the sake of arguing. We went from debating the practicality and merit of Ayn Rand's philosophy to the question of quality in print media in comparison to other forms. This evolved -as directionless debates often do- into the question of defining quality itself.( i have more to say about this but i digress from my topic).
In discussing the contrast of information mediums and their effectiveness, my mind left the conversation and started to think about the group presentations of last Tuesday and of the effectiveness of those presentations.
While all the groups shared a common interest, and the same subject matter. They all found their own path or direction as a means of conveying information. (The ideas i have about this are somewhat abstract and I fear that my language might sound contrived but bare with me because I don't really know how to put this) but i started to think that the question of quality focusing or categorizing by the medium is improper. It is not the medium that posses varied quality. The quality or type of medium does not determines it's effectiveness. rather the inverse, the effectiveness of said medium determines quality (if that is determinable).
This may seem really pointless to delve into but, at least for me this is significant, I continue: Whether the artist is given, clay, marble, canvas or a pen and paper should not and does not assign any level of quality or effectiveness, it is the thing the artist does with his tools that can be judged (I think everyone can agree with this simplification. this is essentially what my point is just reduced)
But on to the groups:
group 4. The use of Film as a medium. The image, and more importantly the idea of using a chess match speaks endlessly and tirelessly. It was this image of the game, the complexities of the game that make it so profound. The "castling" play that was delved into, is a perfect example of these ever appearing rabbit holes that Nabokov attuned our eyes to. The pun of such a thing is far more than a play on words as we have seen, but rather, another door of perception we have found.
Stylistically group four's film shows how it's chosen medium excels. The passing of time/ the expression of deep thought played out in a simple gesture of smoking cigarettes. the seemingly magical movement of the chess pieces, is an example of cinematic prowess that enunciates this groups quality in their chosen form. Anyways this was unbelievably good (as were they all) but good most importantly in a unique and powerful way-this again applies to all the groups
Group 5.
The medium of poetics. I again was awed at how (for lack of a better word) good this group was and how capable everyone in class is of expressing these crazy levels of quality and mass levels of knowledge representable in a 20 minute presentation. The use of the written word (performed orally) is as we have seen/read/heard incredibly concentrated and purified. The very fact that the group used names as inspiration, and the writings/bloggings of those names for their material, and beyond that as Chelsae (Kinbote) used the writing of Roberts Shade is evidence of this fractal-ed flower that this class has seemed to sprout. The voice it gives to characters or themes that have a limited* voice in their original is just crazy. *I don't mean to say that Nabokov's characters are in anyway limited, but they are limited to what is written, Micheal Wood discusses this and even calls on Humbert to explain. As he puts it best in his novel The Magician's Doubts, "Humbert points for example to what seems to be the rigidity of the textual characters, their hopeless inability to change their tune: 'No matter how many times we reopen 'King Lear', never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion, with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear.'"
But the works of Jessica's Lolita and the whole group's character continuation give life out of salted earth.
Group 5. An array of mediums, but for me it was the medium of action. Live theater so to speak. As the old adage sates: actions speak louder than words. (this even had both, and Disney!) But the use of physical action speak so loudly and so poignantly, i feel that some of most significant moments were moments of silence. One of these moments was namely the scene in which the wolf and Humbert stare quietly at the group of children. Creepy needless to say but so much more than that as well, especially when the character of Frankenstein appeared we didn't need an explanation (though it did help) that this was a moment, one of the most shattering in the book, that is Humbert's self realization. The entire production spoke loudly as well, and the incorporation of song/dance is even another endless topic or point of power. The allusion to fairy tale is again a Major and Hugely effective and productive means and medium. On a side note to this groups imagery, I found Zach's dress and presentation of Little Red Riding Hood a shocking and suspicious relation to MT's own Una-bomber see here.

anyway. Hand's down amazing all of them. and all for their own reasons and merits. The idea that one type or form effects quality is clearly out the window. I was amazed and am still trying to get my mind around this idea of fruition through different artistic directions, but the proof is in the pudding.

-back to my side note earlier about the question of Quality. I read (or tried to read) Robert Pirsig'sZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, meaning I read it but I did not really understand it. But the idea that this book focuses on, is the question of defining quality and whether or not that is even a possible task to accomplish. He started this train of thought hear at MSU and it took him so far into himself that he had to be hospitalized and undergo shock therapy none the less. This just got me thinking about this class and about the focus and attention we all have had on thoughts and ideas stemming from Nabokov's work, And I say this not as though i'm worried anybody will go crazy or that we should cease from exploration rather it is just interesting to me that when a person commits himself to the pursuit of knowledge when he travels inwardly to the point of outward infinity he is deemed crazy. Now i dont know enough to really challange the pyshcological community and i don't really doubt that Pirsig went crazy but it just seems to me that the ventured into a realm of pure conciousness that i suppose was too powerful. And i don't really know if that is a bad thing. as Leary put it"You have to be out of your mind to use your head". I am getting off topic hear, but i guess I'm just trying to say that I'm grateful or this class because we've been shown power of the mind and the capabilities that it has, stemming from simplest of things. It is this notion that we started with, that all the groups employed that we can take a single image, or a single line of prose, a gesture of some kind, a photograph for example* and from this no matter how simple, conjure an entirety

...

reading Transparent Things has been a new challenge, and certainly a change in pace. This comes to me though, in the form of delight. I -and reading other blogs apparently the rest of the class- seem to really dig this new book. It brings to light an whole new voice in Nabokov's catalog. I tried to write about a couple common place moments in my last blog and i found it is almost inexplicable when talking about just why it is i like this style. becuase it doesn't really flow like what we've seen before. I think kyle mentioned that it remined him of Schenectady NY which was a wicked weird movie but still i enjoyed it to. I guess the layering both in the movie but more importantly in the book is really what set it appart. I'm still trying to grasp the reasoning behind a lot of it and maybe it's almost written, or at least some of it in a semi-dream conciousness.
like, as emily (or was it zach?) refered to in her blog, the scene with the pencil, asking: how could they know this history behind the pencil? and i was thinking the same thing,
until it dawned on me -this dawn- when i was in and out of some of the worst sleep i've ever had, that if you can remain semi-concious of your thoughts when you fall into sleep you mind sort of acts out the way that this pencil seen would. you pop into your head an object...desk...skiing...a pirates or whatever, and then your mind starts to create this story and it deepens and widens until you drift off. For me however, i could not drift off, instead once i reached that event horizon, i would snap awake-pissed off, but aware of the maze my mind had wandered, i could trace my steps backward to the initial thought, everything else was fabricated, not false necessarily for i feel the mind acts in determined steps, but i guess i was attune to the transparency of the initial, seeing through it, entering a new place...a realm, maybe its the realm where ghost like to hang out, i dont really know. maybe i'm just still really tired still.
but that's what i was thinking about anyway.

thoughts.

note: i dont what the hell is wrong with the font but its all jumbled around.
I'm sitting at the library (the front desk, should be working) so i have to keep this relatively short.
After finishing Pale Fire, I was relived from self imposed burden i felt that: i should really like this book. And I did, i did while reading it, it was uncountably great, but only after i finished the book did I realize how much i liked Pale Fire. I feel though, that I struggled through because my mind was so caught up in catching up to Nabokov that i lost sight of the material at hand. I don't know that old saying about missing the forest, but i'm sure that it is applicable here. True Pale Fire is a piece of intricacy delicate and complex as a woven shroud, but when focused on the milieu of threads, i didn't see the grandeur they as a whole created.

I enjoyed the detective work required to read Pale Fire, but i felt a longing to discuss the aesthetics. I supposes it’s not something the really needs to be discussed in that it is so obvious, but as much as Nabokov is a clever and complex writer, he is a beautiful one. And this I feel to be, at times, most important.

Anyway, now that we’re getting into Transparent Things, I realize once again the power of poetics that Nabokov presents.

I guess this would be some common place from Transparent Things- not even the best stuff, just some things I found that I’ve enjoyed-

“The receptionist (blond bun, pretty neck) said no, Monsieur Kronig had left to become manager, imagine, of the Fantastic in Blur (or so it sounded). A grassgreen skyblue postcard…… ‘he died last year’ added the girl (who en face did not resemble Armande one bit), abolishing whatever interest a photocrhome of the Majestic in Chur might have presented……what would have been a rugged, horsey, stoop belied every inch of his fantastic majesty.” –even when I try I can’t help but draw my quotes on.

Actually this is posing a serious problem, most of the quotes I want to show don’t really make sense without long lead in, and lead out, and even then they probably don’t fully flower until I have read the whole book. But I continue…

After a long series of descriptions stemming from the description of the pencil he closes, “and the tree in the forest and the forest in the world that Jack built.” A reference to the old mother goose tale (see also My Book and Heart Shall Never Part)

Again on page 517during a phone call, “ ‘You Person?’”… “yes it’s me, I mean ‘you,’ I mean you mispronounced it most enchantingly.’…… you drop your haitches like-like pearls into a blindman’s cup.’/ “Well, the correct pronunciation is ‘cap.’ I win.”

Again I realize how futile it is to express my glee and enjoyment of these lines without simply rewriting the entire thing. I sort of feel like I’m telling one "you had to be there stories", which no one person of your audience enjoys. But hopefully you get it too, because this is awesome.

messy notes that almost lead somewhere

(I learned how to use a scanner so I'm abusing its power)
-this is a copy of my notes to a phrase on page 246 (click the image to get a clearer view)
the name Fra Pandolf got me got me researching (wikiing) and i came up with the painter who painted the portrait discussed in Robert Browning's My Last Duchess. Which was interstingly refferd to on page 240, but Kinbote seems to be mistaken in that Shade's appears nowhere in Browning's Untamed Seahorse My Last Duchess. I started to look deeper into Browing and his wife, stuff about ties to Shelly and his drowning death, Poe. One interesting thing that i couldn't really follow up on but my wiki wandering led me to a point in reference to Elizabeth Brownings Aurora Leigh and how it's Nine books were significant in that Nine is the woman's number in reference to the Nine books of Sybil. And that tied back to the 900 years of family legacy that King Alfonso ( the speaker of Browning's My Last Duchess) gave to his wife- though she cared not for it. I found all sorts of these threads that i thought would go somewhere but ended up not really amounting to much. It was fun, though disappointing, but i thought i would show you guys what it's often been like reading Pale Fire: a lot of these mad ideas that grow from the text but don't always seem to fruit.
you can see it all here on my messy notes (again click the image to see a better view) so some cool stuff, but i don't really think any of it was intended. I think i'm trying to find a zembla that sadly was not meant to be.

john shade?

this is bad,i know. but it took me so long to figure out how to set up a scanner i had no time to draw.

in response to chris...

(I tried to just comment on your last post chris but for some reason it won't show up in the comments), Is Pale Fire a lesser work? I don't really know, im not exactly in the position to say either. As i have yet to finish Pale Fire - i fell very guilty about this fact (bad student) but almost done- But maybe why Lolita is more highly praised is for the very same reasons Nabokov seemed to love Ulysses a didn't like Finnegan's Wake (so he has said) reffering to it as cold pudding. Now i wouldn't say that at all about Pale Fire, but it certainly takes more of a laborious role to read. And i think this is why it is not as highly claimed because the reader is required a more active participation. It's not a bad thing to have this asked of us, but people are flawed, and often dont do what they are asked. More over most people don't have a chance to discuss this in a productive way.
But anyway, I am curious as to why you enjoy Pale Fire more? Right now i enjoyed Lolita more, but again we shall see when i do what i should have already been done with. And i know other people have said they like Pale Fire a lot more too. why is that?

It can be really tough keeping up on blogs. I continually try and set aside time to get some good work in, but continually I find myself at odds with my planned schedule. Now I’m sitting here without proper internet and missing nearly all my books –loaning books to friends though rewarding in sprit, is devastating to my library- My room is freezing and that damn music from the other room. I am becoming Kinbote. Except I don’t have nearly as much to say. But here are a couple things despite my bloggers-block.

In one of my earlier posts I cited a common place passage simply because found the prose to be aesthetically beautiful. Little did I know I was straddling a black and white (red/green) contrasting, crevasse of Kinbotes consciousness. It is at this moment we are exposed to not only the reality of John Shade’s Killer, the intention therein, but more importantly the surreality of Kinbote’s mind. I also believe that this passage and solely this passage reflects kinbote’s acknowledgment of said surreality. It as almost as if we the reader and Kinbote himself are touching the void.

“He did not bring up, my sweet old friend never did, ridiculous stories about te terrifying shadows that Judge Goldsworth’s gown threw across the underworld, or about this or that beast lying in prison and positively dying of raghdirst (thirst for revenge)—crass banalities circulated b the scurrilous and the heartless—by all those for whom romance, remoteness, sealskin-lined scarlet skies, the darkening dunes of a fabulous kingdom, simply do not exist. But enough of this. Let us turn to our Poet’s windows (Page 85).”

This is Quixoteism in Nabokovian fashion. He knows it’s a fantasy! He is admitting that everyone around him (post murder) are saying these “crass banalities” -drab bitter bland truths- about Shade’s murder. They threaten his own realty thus exposing its vulnerability. He won’t come out with it completely but we are exposed to the abyss. We sit upon the event horizon. I guess I am wrong to be critical and I don’t mean to be if I seem so, because even if Kinbote is crazy among other things. I still haven’t decide whose world I like more. Which one I’d like to subscribe to…those sealskin-lined scarlet skies seem to call to me. I know that with the Don I wanted the road to go on forever, so the party would never end. And this party’s just starting to get rowdy.

For anybody who likes the Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Wallen Jennings) this is a link to the song The Road Goes on Forever and the Party Never Ends the only thing that plays this has a stupid stick figure movie but it’s still wicked cool.

various crumbs...

These are just some random things…

I know nothing. At least I didn’t. The other day in class when Parker came up and discussed how Kinbote essentially sucks, it really made me stop. And then I thought. I knew Kinbote was crazy, and wicked sketchy, but when I heard Parker talking about him, I at first felt offended, that I had to defend kinbote: he’s my boy even if he is crazy. Then i realized that I can’t really defend something that I don’t understand, or have really even read. Before Thursday I had read a good amount of pale fire, but I realized I was just reading it to get through it, not really to get into it. And this was wrong. We discussed the rungs of the literary ladder, and I saw that I was barely holding on to the bottom with oiled hands. It was a very humbling experience

So I decided to start over, and read it again. And I started to find stuff all over the place: Kinbote does indeed suck, but I realized too, that maybe I can start to defend him. He’s sort of become this George Kastanza character for me: a skeethy little bastard, but what a genius of one. He’s really tying the story together. And it’s hilarious in that Larry David sort of way.

Page 81in recalling advice given to Shade: “ ‘discussed making recordings of my voice for his use’” –this obviously would bug me, but in reading it, it cracks me up.

And now for something completely different:

“ the famous avenue of all the trees meantioned by Shakespeare, a distant droning sound, the hint of a haze, the turquoise drone of the Observatory, wisps d pale plumes of cirrus, and the poplar-curtained Roman-tiered football field, deserted on summer days except for a dreamy-eyed youngster flying-on a long control line in a droning circle— a motor-powered model plane.

Dear Jesus, do something. (92-93)”

I bring this passage up because there was one line which I actually misread (but I suspect that this may have been intentional) : “a distant droning sound, the hint of a haze” I my head I read it drowning sound, the hint of haze.

The rest of the passage I think is significant too, I’m not sure in what way (anybody?) but it was hard to find a proper place to stop.

Just a little common place…

“crass banalities circulated by the scurrilous and the heartless—by all those for whom romance, remoteness, sealskin-lined scarlet skies, the darkening dunes of a fabulous kingdom, simply do not exist. But enough of this. (85)”

and this is my waxwing, i have the suspicion it looks like everyone else's

short paper

Jon Orsi

Short Paper Page 57

Ouroboros: the snake that eats itself. Page 57: Lolita in a page. While Nabokov is not marred nor deeply invested in a tautological novel, page 57 of Lolita is an introspection, and distillation of the whole of book 1. The voice, subject, struggle, narration and eventual conclusion are all represented in nine, tight-but certainly not simple- sentences.

The passage begins, “Main Character: Humbert the Hummer. Time: Sunday morning in June. Place: sunlit living room. Props old, candy-stripped davenport…” The setup is that of stage direction, of a play. A play by Humbert, in which he is the writer/director, the puppeteer of his subjects. A prelude to an orchestration. This small passage is a mirror to the structure of Nabkov’s own role and work. The stage direction even posses the beauty and clever humor of book 1, “…and mementoes, among these Dolores, were all over the place.” The puppets tethers have been tied with tight poetry.

After the stage has been set, Humbert instantly drives toward the subject of the novel: Lolita: his sin his soul, our story. Lolita is immortalized in the beauty of this passage, the attention to obscure detail, careful crafting has made her into our (his) Venus. We are helpless to the visualization portrayed, “She wore that day a pretty pink dress that I had seen on her once before, ample in the skirt, tight in the bodice, short-sleeved, pink, checkered with darker pink…” Centered here in the passage, Lolita becomes the focus, the subject. We see her; she wears the dress of innocence. It floats as smoothly in our minds as it reads on paper.

Nabokov’s language radiates in these sentences profoundly as the whole of book 1 can accomplish, the beauty is lighting, and a picnic for the reader. Even the structure of the passage reads as we would see Lolita, slowly letting our gaze take her in, “…and, to complete the color scheme, she had painted her lips and was holding in her hollowed hands a beautiful, banal, Eden-red apple.” The subtleties grow and ripen. Temptation flowers. Even the reader, whether or not they will admit, wants a bite of that apple. This image of her tossing the apple and catching it with a “cupped polished plop.” Turns the written word into streaming realism, inducing a literary synesthesia. It also manages to turn character psyche, in that innocence is lost. Lolita-as Humbert would like us to believe- has become the seductress. Tossing. Tempting.

Humbert however, changes this, abruptly. This image of the seduction clad in innocence, flirts with the reader throughout book 1. In this passage, flirtation is carried out, temptation is presented, and in little time, the original sin is indulged, “Humbert Humbert intercepted the apple.” While graphic detail is spared, this passage and book is engrossed in that –awfully sensual- awful sensuality. As Humbert plucks Lolita’s fruit book one comes to a close.

The story has been completed. In the book’s most powerful concentration, Nabokov has saturated these short lines, the page almost leaks. Within the novel itself the story comes full circle, the serpent eats its tail. The content here will suffice for anyone unfamiliar with the book, they need only read these nine lines and they will be irrepressibly beckoned to either read Lolita by the fire, or throw the damned thing in.

Fractal literature

It’s hard going from a novel I’ve read twice, with the aid of the entire class and instructor I’ve been thoroughly digesting, to being on my own again with another piece of raw book. And it’s a tough one to cook. But I’ve been getting into it. To begin with; Does this book remind anyone else of Humboldt’s Gift? Maybe I should ask if anyone’s ever even read that? -Saul Bellow won the nobel prize for literature. Referred to by Nabokov as “miserable mediocrity”- anyway it reminds me of it. Then again I’m not very far along so who am I to say? Aside, I’m pretty sure that Charles Kinbote is totally crazy. –or maybe I am which, like Kyle, is becoming strong possibility- because there are all sorts of strange things being said, maybe I just don’t understand it yet, but on page 15 “…forming together with the shorter flanks twin wings of five hundred verse each, and damn that music.” Or on 93 at the bottom of the first paragraph an odd interjection of “Dear Jesus, do something.” Maybe the distraction has something to do with the “amusement park” that’s apparently in front of his house, but I think it may be beyond that. On a page I cannot remember Sybil says simply “What’s more, you are insane”. And what’s more Kinbote seems to do a lot of what I would consider sketchy behavior, i.e. creeping around these people’s house and looking in the windows.

But then I come to a sobering discovery: that I, we as a reader, are just like (simile), or we are (metaphor…stronger) Charles Kinbote. Always poking around some famous poets work, trying to dissect and discern meaning from scraps of possibly meaningless information. Take for example this blog-I don’t really know what I’m talking about but, I’m wicked giddy because I think ive found something. Even though I’ve yet to do the assignment of annotating a page, I feel like Kinbote in that I’ve got all these notes and side notes on all this stuff. When reading Lolita I had all these clues and maps kind of like Quilty, and man, its all catching up that I maybe metamorphing into a Nabokov character. Maybe I am going to deep, or still stuck on the Lolita fact finding mission, or maybe this is the point of reading., of dedicated reading. Because clearly this is book is beautiful, and the beauty of the story is the annotation. It is the beauty we can find in the description of a simple photograph. The deeper you go the more you find. even web blogging, And I can assure you classmates- as I have been reading almost everyone’s- butterflies are hatching from your blogs.

class discovery

I think at every page in Lolita I have had discoveries. If I was to look closely enough I’d see one in every sentence. Pawing through my book I’ve found one that I’d like to talk about in class tomorrow because it just really stuck with me after reading and I’m still a little bit bothered I should say by the passage because I think it would yield a lot deeper if I put more time into it. Its on page 192.

“One of the latticed squares in the small cobwebby casement window at the turn of the staircase was glazed with ruby, and that raw wound among the unstained rectangles and its asymmetrical position-a knight’s move from the top-always strangely disturbed me.”

This passage strangely disturbed me but I started to read it and think about it and some things began to make sense. Most importantly I believe the knight’s move…and L. nuffsaid. But not just an L a ruby L, Ruby as in Lolita’s lipstick, the Lipstick marks that marked their maps. Maps which CLarie QuiLty used to knight-in –shining-armor away Lolita. In fact this passage comes just ( a knights move) before Quilty is really a figure. This moment is just when Lolita begins to fall out of love with Humbert. I’m not quite on top of it but its starting to make sense to me, I feel that this has to be significant.

I sometimes feel that my vision fails me. I have trouble reading road sings and small print, I see most everything but sometimes its just not as clear as it had ought to be. I see the same way when reading, I’ve read the story and I know what happens, but I know that beneath –sometimes above- the text there are torrents of rivers that I can’t seem to stay afloat on. In re-reading Lolita I am awed at how much emerges but dismayed on what gets past me. (I’m not bummed or anything. quite the opposite it’s just that this is such a wild story) Anyways there’s this one feed I keep catching on to but it continually escapes me. Like a fat trout I just can’t slay-out. This theme of myopia! It is peppered about the text. and I can’t seem to see it clearly... Anyway so myopia is nearsightedness and I can see why or how that is a thread in this text. Humbert is a man of action (drastic.) and does not seem to foresee problems arising. Humbert is aware of this strange(rs) presence but does not see distantly, he does not see Quilty. Humbert is in love with the foreground of womanhood, but as it recedes (proceeds?) into the future it becomes distorted and ugly and muddled, the only beautiful things he can see are at what we could consider the beginning. Humbert is in awe of Lolita’s beginning, her childhood. Even his relationship with her is along the same pattern, it starts in beauty an then fades to bleary misery. The greek for myopia means closed eye. Maybe Humbert is living in a world with his eyes closed, (perhaps recalling his past) [holy shit!: just thought of something as I was spellchecking this blog. check out below] Ok so these things are clear to me. But. I know that Nabokov is too good for something so simple like that, he is deliberate with his use of this term. The whole damned book is myopic, we at first see what’s at the foreground, what’s meant to be seen, but we are missing this depth by fathoms. We even start with part I which is exciting and sexual and enticing and readers eat that up. Part two is a little less clear and we get sort of muddled with what’s going on and whos whos and all this production that is being put on. Its confusing. Nearsighted. And I know that there is a whole other something beyond that’s even more obscured, the stuff I can see is only Nabokov’s foreground. You really need to read this book with glasses.

Chapter three page 11.

“Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half Dutch, in her case. I remembered her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as “honey-colored skin,” “thin arms,” “brown bobbed hair,” “long lashes,” “big bright mouth”); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).”

The importance of style

I have been grinding these past few days or weeks over this book. It has quickly become one of the best written novels i have ever read and yet, one of the darkest. Not dark in a modern graphic fashion (see gothmo kids) but in a very real and moving way. Again i am not moved to depression or anything like that but its just very deep seated. It is like when-over the weekend- i watched Titus Andronicus. For those who have no seen this movie or read the play, i cannot describe to you the sheer horror of this film. But it was good! the same type of awful things play out as they would in that alleged movie Saw (stupid.) but in Titus it was something.
With Nabokov and obviously with Shakespeare i feel almost anything could be poetry.The class list for example. And i don't say this simply because they are who they are, but because i feel it when i read it.
This semester was my first one back after about a year out of school. The first two books i've read were an autobiography and a book about a pederast. But i've pined over them! it is a petro-rainbow.

Caliban- Be no afreard; the isle is full of noises,
sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt
not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then i dreaming,
The clouds methought would ope and show riches
ready to drop upon me, that, when i waked
I cried to dream again.

common place crumbs

in speaking with headmistriss pratt she calls him:
Mr. Humbird
Dr. Humburg
Mr. Humberson
Dr. Hummer
and Dorothy Hummerson.


"My west-door neighbor who might have been a businessman or a college teacher, or both, would speak to me once in a while as he barbered some late garden blooms or watered his car, or, at a later date, defrosted his driveway."

To Amanda

I don't think that i have grasped the reasoning for a pedophile, but maybe:
Nabokov need a canvas for contrast. He needs a weathered, well-read, witty narrator to tell an ugly story. it is however -most importantly- a beautiful story about an ugly thing with beautiful characters in an often ugly scene painted most beautifully.
i guess

or maybe Nabokov was just so sure of himself -Vivian Bloodmark?- that he knew he was so good and badass, he just knew he could make even a monster into a masterpiece

Lolita common place vol. 1

It would be impossible for me to post all of my notes from this book for i would simply have to rewrite it, but here are a few that truly made me laugh.

"Nymphets do not occur in polar regions" 33

"with limp wet things overhanging the dubious tub (the question mark of hair inside)." 38

All of page 39

"and starting a make-believe conversation about a fake book by some popular fraud." 43

**"Main character: Humbert the Hummer. Time: Sunday morning in June. Place: sunlit living room. Props: old, candy-stripped davenport, magazines, phonograph, Mexican knickknacks (the late Mr. Harold E. Haze-God bless the good man-had engendered my darling at the siesta hour in a blue washed room, on a honey moon trip to Vera Cruz, and mementos, among these Dolores, were all over the place)." 57**

"Must have been an enormous molar with an abscess as big as a maraschino cherry." 63

"As great authors than i have put it: "Let readers imagine" etc. On second thought, I may as well give those imaginations a kick in the pants." 65

" how eventually i might blackmail-no, that is too strong a word-mauvemail big haze." 71

"Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons." 73

Pop Synesthesia

Wes Anderson is a furtive Nabokov reader. He must be. While there is no tangible evidence to support this, there is in my mind no doubt.

While reading speak memory, I could not turn off my minds eye of depicting nearly every seen into neat Royal Tennenbaum moments. I have the suspicion that i alone suffer from this affliction but take for example Nabokov's childhood, specifically his schooling ...and then watch this
When reading i could even here the music playing out in my mind. I wish that i could have experience this with relation to something other than a movie, but at least it was a good one.
Tell me if you can, that this scene from the flick does not conjure up a passage from Speak Memory on 149 (read first then view)
She would be ten in November, I had been ten in April. Attention was drawn to a jagged bit of violet mussel shell upon hich she had stepped with the bare sole of her narrow long-toed foot. No, I was not English. Her greenish eyes seemed flecked with the overflow of the freckles that covered her sharp featured face...(I am tempted to continue writing but i fear i wont stop until page 310).
In fact when i read any of his love depictions my mind would spin the reel of film complete with the Nico song and all. Is this just me? Is this just pop-synesthesia?

Art for art's sake

You know how you say, "i wish i could have said that-wrote that-...post a blog about that"? in my last Dr. Sexson class we discussed touchstone moments, moments that inspire or moments of literary significance that you have come across. In class we were all asked to post several of our touchstone moments and i had few good ones, but there was one that a fellow student wrote, and the blog itself was a moment for me. And within that blog a frame of even more beauty: Ezra Pounds, In the Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

i can't remember who in my previous class wrote about this calling it real art for art's sake. but i'm jealous.