Response to "class discovery" by Jon Orsi

Alright Jon, I've been working on this for a while because this sentence also "strangely disturbed" me the first time I read it, and have been trying to solve this since you put it up. I think I've come to the point of an undeniably clear answer for you.

I agree with you on everything you have said. Ruby with lipstick, lipstick on maps, maps that Quilty used to "knight" the little princess away. Little L. You're correct! Absolutely. But how can we prove this. How can we show that Quilty is the "knight" that will save the Queen Lolita (at least until we find out he is only another evil king)? What we need to do is, as Kyle says, "fall down the rabbit hole".

The first thing that, for some reason, popped into my mind when I read this passage was the last place I remember seeing the actual word "rubies" in the book. It's on pg. 111 in Ch. 27 of Part 1. It says, "She was all rose and honey, dressed in her brightest gingham, with a pattern of little red apples, and her arms and legs were of a deep golden brown, with scratches like tiny dotted lines of coagulated rubies...." While this may only have a connection to the passage you listed in the fact that it has the related ruby color, which seems to play a huge part in this novel (and happens to be my favorite color), I don't think it has to much to do with the "knight's move". Let's dig deeper.

I'm very glad that Sexson decided to read the passage about the "little pigs" or I may have skipped right over this part, but only a few more pages into Ch. 27, pg. 117, we come across a word that could very easily be passed....if not paying attention to detail. In that sentence with the cars like pigs, it says, "but then, by magic, a formidable convertible, resplendent, rubious in the lighted rain, came into motion---was energetically backed out by a broad-shouldered driver---and we gratefully slipped into the gap it had left." Wow!!

Sirens were going off everywhere when I looked over this passage again. First, rubious... meaning "of the color of a ruby; red" (dictionary.com) pops out because this is obviously Quilty here with his broad-shoulders! Then I imagined the cars moving like described here.... One backed out, one slipped in...... One moving one direction in an L shape, one moving another direction in an L shape!! Right on!

Skip forward to HH seeing the ruby glass and VOILA!... he see it and it subconsciously can not remember why it bothers him, but it does. And the "knight's move" may or may not have anything to do with the way the cars move, but I definitely think the square window could definitely be seen as a chess board.

Alas, this is not the only way to interpret this line. Something about Mona in the few sentences before this line (how she looked at HH with a cool gaze, Lolita playing the pimp for Mona) continued to bug me after I did all the CQ thought, and this is what I pulled from that.

This other theory I have on the "knight's move" veers in quite a different direction than you took it, however, in the way that I said to myself, "If there is some type of intricate Chess game woven throughout the pages of Lolita, could it be possible that HH is one king, CQ is the other king, and Lolita is the all powerful queen up for grabs here? If so, who would the knight be?" My only guess is Mona, and here's why.

In chess, it is possible for the knights to jump over the pawns at the very beginning of the game and get into a very protective position for the queen, and you may not realize this until you are right there trying to take the queen and you can not because of those intitial knights that got in the way.

The unassuming HH could have had this happen to him here by Mona. She moved herself into a position to protect the queen (Lo) and, thus, manipulated HH in ways he could not see. My example for this comes in Part 2, Ch. 14, where HH calls Mona to confirm the reasons behind Lolita missing piano lessons, and Mona says, "....and presently Mona was saying in her humblest, sexiest contralto, "yes, sir," "surely, sir," "I am alone to blame, sir, in this unfortunate business," (what elocution! what poise!) "honest, I feel very bad about it" ---and so on and so forth as those little harlots say."

And there you have it, it is not Lo pimping out Mona, as HH first assumes, but Mona playing pimp to Lolita.

This last connection does work in some ways, and may or may not be the meaning behind this sentence, but I for one think that HH is quite scared of those around him who are capable of moving like the knight..... thoughtfully, trickily, and patiently. If this is true, then it doesn't matter if the line pertains to CQ or Mona, right? Maybe, maybe not. Was this answer undeniably clear? Maybe, maybe not. But we're studying Nabokov, and he and only he can see "the web" and only he knows "the ways in which it bends". We are mere pawns in his master game.

All we can do is dig ourselves deeper and deeper into this rabbit hole that has no end...

P.S. I like the CQ connection better myself, but what can you do? ;)

Quotes from a Chess Forum on Knights

"I prefer the knights because against lower rated players they are an enigma that they don't quite understand which allows me to use the knights in ways that will surprise them."

"It's easy to untangle a badly placed knight."

"Knights take ages to get from one side to the other and so prefer it if all the pawns are on the same side (or all in the middle, which is quite unusual in an endgame)."

It is an intense and fun MUST read...

I just got done reading one of the articles posted by Sam (that she says Dr. Sexson unearthed), and I also am quite impressed by how much fun and intense it was. Just because I read this article I am write now pre-ordering the book. If you have any respect for Nabokov, his work, or what happens to magic when the trick is unveiled only halfway through the act, you must read this article. The link is here.

The part that excited me the most (as a writer) were in the last lines of the article:

But—and this is the second but not secondary meaning of the blottings out—revisions also offer a window into the humanity of the author. That even the greatest of geniuses (and yes, I believe the term is valid for these two) were not superhuman; they live in the same world of error and doubt that the rest of us inhabit. The fact that they think they've made "mistakes" makes their work even more perfect than it would be if they never blotted a line or scratched out a word.

This gives me hope that someday I may be able to actually write and perhaps publish something that is readable and close to intelligence (since I most definitely do not have the ability to turn lead from my pencil INSTANTANEOUSLY into gold on a page).

Fun Lolita Quizzes - No Sweat! ;)

Try this fun little thing, I think both of these will be quite helpful in starting your mind on the path to a good question for the first quiz of this class.

Once you have clicked on the link, you will be asked to take either the html or flash quiz. I had fun taking the flash quiz, but if you do not have the needed flash player, I'm sure the html one will suffice. Good Luck!

Quiz 1

Quiz 2

Nabokov - Day Eight

Listening to Jeremy Irons speak as Humbert Humbert once again....

The first time he saw Lolita...

Talk about the film versions, Clare Quilty and hoe he is a doppelganger to HH.

We want to know the top ten from the top ten books book:

Middlemarch – George Elliot - Number Ten
The stories of Anton Chekhov
A La Resarch
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet
Adventures of Huckle Berry
Lolita
War and Peace
Madame B. - Number Two
Anna Karenina – Number one


Number 11 and 12..... Don Quixote and Moby Dick.... 13 – Great Expecations.... 14 – Ulysses.... 15 – Odyssey and so on.....

Section 6 (210-211) – The part of the book that James found a connection to “Speak, Memory” in.

Joseph Campbell says about Actaeon and Dianna – Achteon was looking at her with only the normal look in his eyes... Is Lolita also about a person who is unable to look upon the goddess, and still live?

The secret to how Clare Quilty wrote the play at the University!

He was the person at the hotel that saw them walk in.... Now we listen to Jeremy Irons read it.

Part of this is a parody of detective novels....

Nabokov would get a kick out of all the detectives keeping an eye on all the intensely small details just like he wants them too....

Talking about Jamie Lynn's discovery, Umber moth... ugly, brown, ordinary. We turn to 319 to discuss Humbert Humbert name.

Solipsism – The philosophy that there is no world except for the one that you imagine, the one within your mind and when you are gone, so is it.

Diana of the Ephesians

About the Book

The author implies that, like the principal character in 'Lolita', the regime in Iran imposes their "dream upon our reality, turning us into his figments of imagination." In both cases, the protagonist commits the "crime of solipsizing another person`s life." The title is also an indirect reference to the Islamic state, which took power in 1979 and soon afterward lowered the marriage age for young men and women.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true.

For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran.

Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense.

Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice.

The Kinks

"We all have such fateful objects--it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another--carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of special significance for us: here shall John always stumble, there shall Jane's heart always break."

-Vladimir Nabokov (The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated)

Jean Christophe

I marked it on my first read through, looked it up on my second.

Here is a description of a book that Mr. Taxovich say Humbert's estranged wife, Valeria, would like to read.... I did the research to see what it was, and I'm sure seeing it at that part of the novel (if I had read Jean Christophe) would have made me laugh:

Jean-Christophe is a novel, written in the "bildungsroman" fashion, in ten volumes by Romain Rolland published between 1904 and 1912, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. It was translated into English by Gilbert Cannan.

The central character, Jean-Christophe Krafft, is a German musician of Belgian extraction, a composer of genius whose life is depicted from cradle to grave. He undergoes great hardships and spiritual struggles, balancing his pride in his own talents with the necessity of earning a living and taking care of those around him. Tormented by injustices against his friends, forced to flee on several occasions as a result of his brushes with authority and his own conscience, he finally finds peace in a remote corner of Switzerland before returning in triumph to Paris a decade later.

I ended up finding out after looking through the Notes on this book in the back of the novel that neither Humbert Humbert or Nabokov liked the book ;).

To Amanda...

What if this monkey were free? Would he be able to resist the natural temptations to live as a monkey does, wild and naughty? Think of it this way... What if most monkeys could escape their cages, but refuse to because they know that they would be beaten by their keepers and thrown into the same cage..... maybe even a worse one.

Nabokov was interested in what would happen to the monkey who thought he was smart enough to let himself out of the cage without being caught.... but instead of being beaten by his keeper, he was beaten by another monkey.

Nabokov - Day Seven

Jeremy Irons playing Humbert Humbert -

In the dark.....soak it in, picture it..... (Awesome!)

The epiphanic moment at the end of Lolita will be used in Sexson's class next semester.

****He wants to know what Jeremy Irons part of the play we would like to listen to in class, and why****

Sam's blog – Article on “Lolita” talks about how it is here to stay

Lolita at number 4 on the Newsweek novels you must read.

Sadly, I missed out on Ben Leubner's poetry presentation.... Nabokov was connected to it, because they touched on the “other world”

Aubrey Beardsly, 19th century artist? Pornographer? Priapic...... relation to Rapunzel?

****He wants to see some more commentary / annotations on one page on Lolita, 5-7 discoveries****

John Orsi's blog – Talking about how it is one of the best books he's ever read and his response to Amanda's blog.

Amanda's blog – The answers to, “Why choose a pedophile?”


Artists play the game of, “What is the WORST that could happen?” John Orsi brings up Shakespeare's “Titus and And...” The raping and the deaths and the cutting and beauties and crazies.

Almost anything can be poetry.

Humbert Humbert as Calaban (wonderful paper)..... Prospero as the stage director.... “The Tempest” is through and through Lolita.


Why would the poet use Billy Collins use “Picnic, Lightning” to title his entire book of poems?
An entire story in two words
An awesome contrast of beauty and serenity vs. intense pain, fear, and death.

Nabokov, “What is the value of a University Education?”

Hiding in his response to this question is the (picninc, lightning) line from Lolita.

****On the first exam you will be asked to name three things that must go into the building of an Artist: Story Teller, Teacher (perhaps least important, and Enchanter (which is most important) ****



The lines at the end of “The Renaissance” by Walter Pater:

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! we are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve–les hommes sont tous condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among “the children of this world,” in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion–that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. [239] Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.
1868.

Prospero tells his daughter to pay “Attention”. Reminds her of the women that watched upon her as a girl, and magically brings them about as the nine muses.


John Ray Jr.'s introduction – Parody on roman numeral 27? - Coincidence and all the other things incorporated within it – Talking about 19th century England and Nabokov interested ….. that's one of the reasons he really focused on this pedophile character....

Humber 9-14, “not a pedohile”, he's only interested in nymphets....

pg. 88 - Talks about Melampus (one of the dogs in the book), one of the hounds of Acteon, who was turned into a stag and eaten by his own dogs.

“Do not look at women with that look in your eye, you will only be put back to square one.” - MS

What play is being put on? “The Hunted Enchantress” and it's all about this Diana and someone comes in to explain how everything is part of an imagination.

Reading pg. 31....... The books in the Prison Library........... He places clue's for the re-reader

Here is the Pym that Sexson wanted me to find:

“ The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym who stows away aboard a whaling ship called Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures further south. Docking on land, they encounter hostile black-skinned natives before escaping back to the ocean. The novel ends abruptly as Pym and Peters continue towards the South Pole. “ -wikipedia.com

Next time we talk about our discoveries and laugh.

Nabokov - Day Five

*** He wants us to read online, offline – And then continue the good works on the blogs***

The remaining people were put into the groups for the end of the year projects.

• Reading Jared's blog entry for the book.

  • Humbert Humbert on pg. 129 tells us to pay attention to what is happening next. To “imagine him, or else he will not exist.”

Nabokov himself considers himself a crucial part in the novel, a creation, master influence over the characters of the books.

• Reading now John Orsi's blog and the quotes he put into it.

Talking now about the accusations that Nabokov could have been a pedophile, nympholeptic man.

• The greatest authors of all time have the ability to take themselves out of their own minds and into the minds of those they create.

• Shakespeare created some evil people.

People have been searching years and years for the origins of Lolita, some have found his love affairs as a child to be interesting, they also know that there was an aesthetic worship in the victorian era of the pre-pubescent body, and he was interested in that as well.

On pg. 250 of “Speak, Memory” he talks about the thing that haunts him: Losing Time.

• His life was one of a nomad. One of the key events in his life was the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

One of the first people to do a Russian crossword puzzle, and to translate Alice in Wonderland into Russian, for $5.

On 287 of “Speak, Memory”, he talks of a wonderful poet he loved.

• Sirin, which is the Russian form of Siren, half-woman;half-bird. It was him he was speaking of. He was the siren, luring the unknowing in.

At end of book, he is sitting on the beach. Dmitri is here.

• Talking now about the decision Dmitri made to publish Nabokov's Last, uncomplete novel – The Original of Laura.

• Once we see something, we can not unsee it. Looking into the other pieces of life, gives us a fragmented mind of what is really, real.

****Put and talk about your picture if you have not done it yet.****

Reading now from Lolita:

• on 316, always picked locations and class lists that were very important.

• The Casbeem Barber that cost Nabokov a month of work. “And at every explodent spat into my neck.” The dead ball player, as if he was alive, was dead in a picture right by him, 30 years ago.

• Took him 3 months of his life to work out that section of the book.

Now we are talking about, white widowed males. The confessions

• The hour glass shape on the bottom of a black widow..... hour glass, our glass [ lake ].

Paronomasia - Paronomasia is the use of words that sound similar to other words, but have different meanings. Just like above.

*** A whole term paper on insect imagery would be woderful. Pg 229, spider web.****

What fairy tale is Lolita displacing? I need to figure it out... It is Beauty and the Beast, Cupid and Psyche, Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, one of Ovid's Metamorphosis's Story

****Annotate a single page from Lolita.... he wants us to dig and write and illuminate it as much as possible****

Asked John to open to a random page in his book.... opened to 256.... Sexson, over joyed by the 1 in 3 chance that this could happen, now reads to us the lines of the magical poem here. It is Beauty and the Beast, “it is beauty that killed the beast” King Kong, Incredible Hulk. Humbert Humbert is not a good poet, but Nabokov is, and still takes a not very good poem and puts a lot into it.

Narcissus!?!

Woman behind 'Lolita': Nabokov's wife, Vèra, was muse, editor and selfless partner

by George Lowery

A Cornell student, arriving at Vladimir Nabokov's house in the 1950s, saw a fire blazing in the backyard. Suddenly the professor's wife ran out of the house and extracted pages of a manuscript from the flames. Not for the first time, Vèra Nabokov had saved one of her husband's books, but this time it was one of the 20th century's great novels: "Lolita."

So recounted Stacy Schiff, whose 1999 biography "Vèra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)" won the Pulitzer Prize. She spoke June 8 to a packed auditorium of alumni, including some of Nabokov's former Cornell students, during Cornell Reunion Weekend.

The former students well remembered Vèra, who attended each of her husband's classes and was introduced as his assistant. She took over the classes if Nabokov was ill. She was said to carry a gun and was known to upbraid students who chattered during a Nabokov lecture: Did they not realize they were in the presence of a genius?

"If you've ever taken a cat to a vet in a carrying case, and extracted the animal in a blur of claw and hackles and muscle, you know what it is to write about Mrs. Nabokov," Schiff said.

Schiff said she was mystified by the Nabokovs' relationship. Her work was greatly complicated by Vèra's destruction of Nabokov's correspondence, all of which she wrote in his name throughout their 52-year marriage. For biographers, Schiff noted, "Facts are slippery, memories are faulty, parties involved always have vested interests, subjects can resist, documents mislead. Context is all."

In the case of Vèra, said Schiff, "From the start I knew that Mrs. Nabokov was the worst kind of subject: She was formal, she was stoic, she was private, selfless and capable of self-dramatization -- all the qualities on which biography tends to founder."

Schiff persevered, uncovering evidence that Vèra functioned as Nabokov's full creative partner, as well as his muse, editor, agent, translator, protector and chauffeur, among other roles. Her reticent subject would have hated Schiff's book.

Although a "no trespassing" sign seemed to loom over the life of Vèra Slonim Nabokov (1902-91), Schiff ignored it. "Vèra lived by myths: She never contributed to Vladimir Nabokov's work, she was never worried about the publication of 'Lolita,' never felt destitute when the family had no money, never raised her voice when her husband told her he was in the midst of an affair. All of these statements were false."

Moreover, Vèra was "a master of the feint, a champion bluffer. One of her favorite tactics was to obscure the truth with a riddle. No one understood the staying power of apocrypha better than Vèra," Schiff noted.

She said that in the 1940s Nabokov flirted with a Wellesley student and told Vèra he loved small-breasted women. Years later she said that her husband as red-blooded Russian could never have said such things. "I began to recognize that the disavowals were the story," said Schiff. "The silences were my text. I looked elsewhere for the truths."

Throughout his career, Nabokov dedicated his books to his wife, who made them possible and could not bear a bad translation or anything else that might detract from her husband's public image.

"In Vèra's outrage, I learned a great deal about her, including how deeply devoted she was to remaining in the shadows," said Schiff. "The art of biography comes in part from the author's ability to express doubt and uncertainty. On the other hand, clues are everywhere if you know to handle them. I knew a great deal about Vèra from her very secrecy."

Nabokov's Last, Uncomplete Novel - Being published in November

Ridiculous, but funny....

Make sure you click on this to be able to read what is being said by the magician and the simpleton.

Sadly I Must Say

I apologize to those who read my posts of class events, for I will not be attending class this Thursday.... which would make for Nabokov 6, I believe. I am the best man in a very important wedding in the east, thus I will be missing in on very important information. I will read Brittni's blog, as should you, to get the pertinent information from the class that day. I will count on the rest of you to help fill in blanks.... because no one, no matter how skilled a writer or copier of notes they are, can bring to life that humor, knowledge, and wisdom that comes from sitting in on a Sexson class.

Vladimir Nabokov discusses "Lolita" part 2 of 2

I had decided, for the sake of myself (who had never read Lolita until now) and for the sake of others who were in the same boat as I, to not watch or post this second half until I had finished the book.

I have many things to say about the book, and the hard things is finding the right place to start, where to end, and what to talk about....I'm sure many things will just naturally flow into the blogs as the semester progresses.

The thing about this second part that I liked so much more than the first is that they are actually discussing more interesting topics.... such as the easily, widely known fact that any love story that is to be made a big deal out of is going to be scadalous, or enging sadly with death, or adultery, etc. etc...... I hadn't thought about that fact until they said this, and it becomes quite clear now why... in the first part of this video, Nabokov was talking about the caged monkey. This is, in some sorts or another, a type of psychological "Romeo and Juliet", or "Changeling" like story, perhaps even "Scarlet Letter" .

"The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most talented impotent might imagine." -Chapter 5

We become attached to it naturally because it does have romance, sex (we are all human), but it sticks with us longer because it is the type of forbidden love that one shouldn't have and most people can't even imagine on their own.

- This video is wonderful, and if you haven't done so already make sure you see the first part of it that I posted earlier on my blog. I will continue to talk of Lolita more in further entries.

Nabokov - Day Four

Nabokov - 12 Lectures on Literature (that he likes) – Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, Madame Bauvoire, Author of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, Kafka's “Metamorphosis”.....scan a couple of pictures from his book an put on their website.....Sam volunteered
The opening statements to James Joyce's “Ulysses”.... we will study why Nabokov was so interested in this novel
The literary critic (who is in the youtube video with Nabokov on Lolita) wrote, “Gifted Imagination” (I believe that is the title)....
There is a youtube of Nabokov teaching one of his classes too.... he begins lecturing on Kafka's “Metamorphosis”, and how the first fiction came around when the boy cried wolf... absolutely NO truth in what he was saying.

Sexson is now talking about how we need to move beyond the importance of truth in our world today. Truth doesn't matter because we'll never reach full truth anyway, so why not go all the way into the opposite direction.

Sexson is now reading the beginning of the introduction to Lolita.
“A good reader is a re-reader.”

Book being passed around the class: Style is Matter, The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov, Leland De La Durantaye

Nabokov is not modest. He is very egotistical about himself and his work. He is the master artists.... he is a godlike presence in the book itself. He does not dissappear.... he says you should try and find the intentions, look for what the author wants you to find.... he wants you to trip, take a trip.... and fall into the trap where he wants you to fall into the trap...

The primary definition of the artist is: The Enchanter.

People like the idea of “The Alchemist” because they are drawn to the didactic ideas put within it. Even though it's not that good of a book, there are many others out there that do what “The Alchemist” is trying to do much better than it does.

Reaching “The Enchanter” level of an author makes us begin to look at the style of the writer, appreciating the magic and figuring out the tricks.

“The heroes of the book are artistic experiments and created instructions.”

Magic, Story, Lesson..... the pieces to a master author

Nabokov says, “The precision of the poet and the intuition of the scientist” - That's how to read my friend.

Story telling is not an embelishment..... Brian Boyd tells us that the arts and humanities are the most important thing to learn, live, and love. It is not a waste of time.

“We need stories more than we need buildings and bridges.” - Sexson …. Bridges can only get you to from here to there. Stories can get you from here to Oz.

Chapter 6 is the ultimate novel in the book, “Speak, Memory”. If you read only one chapter in the book, read Chapter 6.

Next semester Sexson will be teaching the capstone class and focusing on epiphanie's, being touched by the divine.
You can come up with epiphanies if you have read: William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinsen, or James Joyce.
People become obsessed with “Speak, Memory” because they can flip to anywhere in it to find something that relates to their feelings, and instructions on art.... they take it everywhere with them.

“Lolita” takes place in the 1940's, even though it was published in the 1950's.

Nabokov loved Edgar Allen Poe, for many different reasons, loved the rhythm of “The Raven”

Another book being passed around: “On the Origin of Stories”: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction by Brian Boyd

Important quote from the back of this prior book: “Then we must consider, as Boyd suggests we do, the difference between solving a problem and picturing a chance of solving a problem – and imagine what it would mean not to be able to do the second.” -Michael Wood, Princeton University (this touched me)

I just read the caption that Jana left below her picture from her parents. She is talking about the mysterious nature of the photograph, things that have disappeared and maybe never were.

Talked also about Helena Lafave and Aaron Belaire's picture.

“In search of lost time....” It haunts major writers.... Joyce, Nabokov, Shakespeare.... how to we bring into fruition the things that have been irretrievably lost.... through a photo?..... through artful remembrance that is available to us only by as much as we are capable of using our words

We are now talking about Chapter 5 and the beauty given to it.

The relationship of death to photography.


THE POWER OF FACEBOOK TO GIVE YOU IMMORTALITY. EVEN IF YOU DIE, YOU WILL NOT BE TAKEN OFF A FACEBOOK. YOU AND YOUR MEMORIES WILL LIVE ON FOR OTHERS TO READ.

The task of the artist seems to be that you must sometimes kill beauty to represent it. (To hold a butterfly and it's beauty, you must kill it in a bag with chloroform and then pin it to something.)

Reading now from pg 138, Chapter 6 in “Speak, Memory”.... The magic carpet ride.... The epiphanic moment for Nabokov


Read Lolita over the weekend.... 3 times ;)

Will the real Vlad please stand up?

Although this video is not really Nabokov, it is a wonderfully acted rendition of something that the man might have thought, said, and talked about. Check it out!

Thoughts on Nymphets and "Lolita"

"Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as "nymphets."
-Humbert Humbert in "Lolita"

Wikipedia says about the word, nymphet, that "A nymphet is seen to be a sexually precocious, attractive girl, and the term was notably used by French author Pierre de Ronsard,[1] and popularised by Vladimir Nabokov in the novel Lolita.[2] In Lolita, protagonist Humbert Humbert uses nymphet to describe the 9-14-year-old girls to whom he is attracted. In today's popular press the term is sometimes applied to women in their late teens or early twenties."

Not much help there... let's dig deeper.

The definition given by wikipedia for nymph: "A nymph in Greek mythology is a female spirit typically associated with a particular location or landform. Other nymphs, always in the shape of young nubile maidens, were part of the retinue of a god, such as Dionysus, Hermes, or Pan, or a goddess, generally Artemis.[1] Nymphs were the frequent target of satyrs. They live in mountains and groves, by springs and rivers, also in trees and in valleys and cool grottoes. They are frequently associated with the superior divinities: the huntress Artemis; the prophetic Apollo; the reveller and god of wine, Dionysus; and rustic gods such as Pan and Hermes.

The symbolic marriage of a nymph and a patriarch, often the eponym of a people, is repeated endlessly in Greek origin myths; their union lent authority to the archaic king and his line."

Under etymology it says, "Nymphs are personifications of the creative and fostering activities of nature, most often identified with the life-giving outflow of springs.

The Greek word νύμφη has "bride" and "veiled" among its meanings: hence a marriageable young woman. Other readers refer the word (and also Latin nubere and German Knospe) to a root expressing the idea of "swelling" (according to Hesychius, one of the meanings of νύμφη is "rose-bud")."

Thus we see how someone worshipped, young, beautiful and personifying and symbolozing so many things for Humbert Humbert can easily be given the title, "Nymphet", a powerful and heavy word to call any being.

I will continue my thoughts on this subject as I read through the book.

The Brian Boyd Introduction

The Brian Boyd introduction to the Everyman version of Speak, Memory, can be found online at:


http://www.randomhouse.com/features/nabokov/speak.html

Nabokov - Day Three

-Brittney is the assistant monster blogger. Class notes and keeping track of the class.

****Talking about the Nabokovian commentary on the pictures that we have chosen of our childhood, making sure that we point out the fine details that perhaps the eye or brief bypasser may not look, make a simple picture enjoyable, alliterary, and interesting....maybe even funny****

**** If you do already have a blog, fill it with some goodies****

“I did not want to touch hearts, or even effect minds.... what I was reaching was to make a sob of the spine.” - Nabokov on his reasons behind writing Lolita

****Put a common place book into your blog, a place where you will put lines, sentences, even paragraphs that you can not resist..... you can open another blog and link it to the main one to create your common place book****

Nabokov actually turned one of the most repellent, disturbing subjects and (by slight of hand, a trick) he turned it into one of the most beautiful, touching books to ever be written....

The details that Nabokov uses are usually always in the service of another detail that may be useless to most, and yet loved by many.

Chapters 40-48 of Ezekiel will treat you to intense detail that will force you to construct a very complex reality, the type of details (in depth) as Nabokov would do.

Discovery – It's a discovery. Part of the enjoyability of Nabokov is discovering the world on your own.

Writing – he uses puzzles, games.... he does write books that you need to see the things that are hiding...symbolic....”everything is hidden, and it is part of your enjoyment of the book” - Sexson....

He now tells the story of the hidden objects being discovered by a child sitting, coloring on their “Draw on me” menu at dinner, and how it's related to reading Nabokov for the first time. It's just like it.

****Every group (in our group projects) is going to be devoted to a specific act of discovery that comes from Nabokov and reading his materials. Must be informative, must be enjoyable (“super-enjoyable” he says). This will be towards the end of the semester.****

When we get together in a group, we are using a communal source of information that he will not even know, never even expect.

****I am in group 6. We had them assigned today.****

His autobiography is a great field to produce answers that would otherwise not make sense in Lolita. - Sexson

James's favorite novel is “On the Road”, read his blog....

Nabokov says, “Parody is a game.” Very important difference between the two..... satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

Nabokov took many trips with butterfly nets.... not with 12 year old girls.

Could there be a connection between chasing butterflies and chasing the unattainable 12 year old girl? Could there be something deep?

Beating down “The Alchemist” because we like the idea of the story, even though it's not that good.

“Lolita and Pale Fire could give you an experience you could never have with Dan Brown.” -Sexson (could get people angry at him for that)

Nabokov's final riddle – The whole second part of Lolita is a prank master following, beating down Humbert Humbert with clues that he can not solve.

“The Origins of Story” - ?Brian Boyd? -Talks about the discovery and the joys behind the low-brow, the high-brow literature. “We need stories as much as we need air. They are absolutely fundamental to human life.”

Book to read – Haroun and the Sea of Stories – Children's novel that does the job of an adult novel.

….Don't put a stumbling block in front of a blind person.....

****He wants us to talk about the little treats we find at the edge of one page. Call everyone else stupid and talk about that little secret you found because you have knowledge that we do not.****

“The word real is the only word that MUST be put in quotation marks.” - Nabokov
Nabokov wants to reach a place where he can get to a place where reality does not have to wear those quotes like claws.

Is there a chess game, puzzles hidden in his books?

Vivian Darkbloom – Vladimir Nabokov – (He's there!)

What is aaron's middle name? Anthony

John Ray Jr.

Doppelganger....that's how you spell it....

The annotator does exist.

Speak Memory – pg. 34 – What is he talking about? Synaesthete.... a mixing up of the senses.... you visualize sounds and hear colors. Nabokov is one of the most.

- Writers who best exemplify art for art's sake best.... Nabokov and Wilde

Dostoevsky was a severe epileptic. They move into another sense of sublime area.

Synaesthetia.... January is blue, it starts up high and to the right.

“People with synesthesia
Main article: List of people with synesthesia
Determining synesthesia from the historical record is fraught with error unless (auto)biographical sources explicitly give convincing details.
Famous synesthetes include David Hockney, who perceives music as color, shape, and configuration, and who uses these perceptions when painting opera stage sets but not while creating his other artworks.[72] Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky combined four senses: color, hearing, touch, and smell.[3] Vladimir Nabokov describes his grapheme-color synesthesia at length in his autobiography, Speak, Memory and portrays it in some of his characters.[73] Composers include Duke Ellington,[74] Franz Liszt,[75] Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,[76] and Olivier Messiaen, whose three types of complex colors are rendered explicitly in musical chord structures that he invented.[3][77] Physicist Richard Feynman describes his colored equations in his autobiography, What Do You Care What Other People Think?[78] Other notable synesthetes include musicians John Mayer and Patrick Stump; actress Stephanie Carswell; electronic musician Richard D. James aka Aphex Twin (who claims to be inspired by lucid dreams as well as music); and classical pianist Hélène Grimaud. Although it has not been verified, Pharrell Williams of the hip-hop Neptunes and N.E.R.D. claims to experience synesthesia,[79] and to have used it as the basis of the album Seeing Sounds.
Some artists frequently mentioned as synesthetes did not in fact have the condition. Alexander Scriabin's 1911 Prometheus, for example, is a deliberate contrivance whose color choices are based on the circle of fifths and appear to have been taken from Madame Blavatsky.[3][80] The musical score has a separate staff marked luce whose "notes" are played on a color organ. Technical reviews appear in period volumes of Scientific American.[3]
French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire wrote of synesthetic experience but there is no evidence they were synesthetes themselves. Baudelaire's 1857 Correspondances (text available here) introduced the notion that the senses can and should intermingle. Baudelaire participated in a hashish experiment by psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau, and became interested in how the senses might correspond.[14] Rimbaud later wrote Voyelles (1871) (text available here), which was perhaps more important than Correspondances in popularizing synesthesia, although he later boasted "J'inventais la couleur des voyelles!" [I invented the colors of the vowels!].
Sean Day, synesthete and the President of the American Synesthesia Association, maintains a list of famous synesthetes, pseudosynesthetes, and non-synesthetes who used synesthesia in their art or music.” -Wikipedia.org

Read Lolita before next week. No LIFE outside of this class.

Very telling sentence on page 125 of Speak, Memory.... read it.

Vladimir Nabokov discusses "Lolita" Part 1 of 2

I will not forget the thought of the monkey as I am reading through the novel.... but one of the funniest parts of this video is when they move from the table to the couch. I laughed out loud at that because, perhaps I missed them say something, but it was like they all of a sudden wanted to become more intimate with their conversation, they all knew hat was going on, and just stood up and walked to the couch. How very funny and perhaps important to the whole video.... let me know what you think of it in comments, or if I should post the second part on the blog? :)

Nabokov - Day Two

Nabokov's Blues – (Kurt Johnson and Seve Coates) A book about his butterflies being passed around (Not really about his butterflies, but about him. It's just not about him being sad.

Nabokov – Lectures in Russian Literature – Edited by Fredson Bowers

Going through the names of all the people in the class...

-Abate and Zygerlicke have never NOT been first and last in the class roles...

Oral Traditions – Talking about Memory Theatres and how they work from last semester – Going through other people's theatres

There is always a lot more than meets the eye. It's all about discovery, and he wants some of us ****TOO PUT THIS TOPIC IN OUR TERM PAPERS****

Had me write my name and number on the board.... sure, feel free to contact me...

Doug now talks about his symbols and colors and his memory from 1.5 years old

Nabokov does not like

****To probe, not to ponder..... I need to change my quote I quoted from MS of Nabokov..... Probe is a lot more intrusive****

*****Next assignment – Reproduce a photo of me from an earlier time in my life..... do a Nabokovian like commentary on the photo*****

Talking about the novel, “Sound and Fury”

Now talking about describing something from that golden area of our life where he can't get the abstraction as we know it in our literary life, but it is purely experience.... lights, sounds, objects.

Talking of Adam and Eve now, and the eating of the fruit and how their eyes opened and they saw themselves naked for the first time..... they changed from the earlier ways of seeing into experience...

Innocence to experience..... Children's Literature.....

-Nabokov wants us to make the concrete and very solid and connect them to the abstract and strange...

Reading the first few lines of Nabokov.... Reading from Zach Morris's blog....

Nabokov calls Dostoevsky is called “old, dusty” (doesn't like him)

Nabokov loves doubles, dopplegangers

Sexson is talking about the first time he read Lollita.... He thought he was going to be reading a dirty novel, but instead he read, “Lo, lee, ta”.....and his life was forever changed

The language was the subject matter of the book

****He thinks that when you first discovered literature would make a great blog****

“What use is a book without pictures?” - Alice ….. Speak, Memory has pictures!

****He says not to get a good photo, he says just to get a bad one of yourself because it is more interesting.... look at it with the care of a scientist****

Chess is the third most important thing to Lewis Carroll..... it is third only to butterflies and dopplegangers.....

Nabokov loves adjectives, complex sentences....

Reading one of Nabokov's commentaries on his pictures.... the one of him at his desk.... seldom does a snapshot compendiate a life so fully....

• If you commit the first lines of the book to memory, he will adore you......

I sadly have to leave soon and will miss so much of the experience, but I have a job interview....

Still going through the first lines of the novel....

Talking about a paper that came out from a man that read references to get into graduate school.... he said that students who referenced Nabokov got into grad school more than those who didn't..... hmmm, keep that in the back of your mind....

All I can think about is what I will miss.... so sad

I love the way he reads through the books..... it's so much better, so much more involved, than any other teacher who has ever read to me.... I wish I could just listen to him read all these books to me, forever, and that I never read them to myself again.... his voice gives them life better than my mind ever could.

Getting to the part of how he hates Freud now....

Going through syllabus.....I got to go...if I miss anything pertinent, please fill me in

Of Course...

Now that I put this blog on here explaining the picture, he of course brings it up in class..... ;)

The Boxing Picture

Since Sexson brought up this picture in class today, I wanted to make sure that the reason behind me putting the boxing picture of Nabokov on my blog is quite clear....

I don't know if this is the reason Nabokov took this picture, and I don't know the story behind it, but it is important to think about the fact that the most famous boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali, says, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," when talking about how to fight as a boxer.

I think this may have something to do with this picture, because Nabokov loves butterflies...

Nabokov - Day One

I walk in and recognize them all..... I do recognize most of them..... I remember their names..... Zach of the Saving Bells, Joan Gossimer Von Goss, James the Rat, Robert of the Worded Limbs, Emo Erin, Charismatic Kari, Jana the Tamer of Horses, Parker of the Outback, Za Zen Zack, and all the others whose names reach the tip of my tongue but don't quite form.... I'll recognize them always.

pg. 316 from Lollita

Reading the class role that becomes a poem, an infatuation, of the girl he loves

Dolores Hayes... Lollita... She is there, between the Roses

(I got a funny look from him when he got to Clark, lol)

Our class list: (spelled the way I heard them, I think that adds to the art of it all ;)

Abate, Aaron

Appling, Elisa

Belaire, Aaron

Benson, Adam

Bowles, Kari

Buzzas, Abbie

Clanton, Samantha

Clark, Christopher

Canal, Parker

Curry, Jana

Diem, Chelsie

Donoho, Emily

Eastmen, Tonia

Figist, Douglas

Goss, Joan

Hale, Victoria

Scott, Jeff

Kester, Rachel

Keinitz, Jyle

Raquel, Kober

Kushman, James (I missed somebody here, :( couldn't keep up)

Loomis, Robert

Meyer, Lisa

Morris, Zachary

Mortinson, Aron

Murphy, Kaitlin

Nelson, Christina

Orsie, Johnathan

Hoser, Jennifer

Ried, Brittany

Smith, Zachary

Springer, Amanda

Stanley, Jenny Lynn

Stryckler, Lee

Thouline, Riley

Wootan, Chris

Ziggler, Rebecca

Zignego, Jordan Zobel, Jessica Zigglerlicky,

“These are the type of situations that poets love and logisticians loathe...”

• MS

Reading through the scriptures.... I mean the syllabus.

Drew a picture of a butterfly on the board.... the butterfly is the soul. PSYCHE – is the greek word for soul

Talking now about his Emergent Lit. Class next semester....The theme of the eternal return – Finnegan's Wake – High Brow, Groundhog Day – Low Brow

Lollita is all about – Time and Memory..... Nabokov is all about Time and Memory

****Speak Memory – First Assignment to read..... wants it read by next Tuesday****

****”And the next best thing to pondering eternity is to ponder your childhood. “ Nabokov****

**** Write about your childhood and your first memory on your blog****

What's important about Nabokov? It's his style. Style is matter.

If you change your style, you will change your subject matter.

Nabokov was one of the first people that introduced people to literature in style.

It's all mimicry, imitation. The autobiography is a butterfly.

They will produce in their wings things that have absolutely no utilatarianism to it other than to just mimic.

So it must not be parapsychology....it must be ART! It is the one thing that it solely non-utilitarianism.

Art comes to you for pleasure in a moment, for nothing more than that moment, celebrating only that moment.

Ecstasy – to stand outside yourself – Nabokov does this to you

Now we will take pictures and talk talk talk.

Nabokov's Handwriting and Notes

A notecard written by Vladimir Nabokov circa 1952 (while he was writing Lolita) listing pop music -- Tony Bennet, Peggy Lee, Red Foley -- apparently transcribed from a minature, remote-controlled Wall-o-matic Jukebox. Tadashi Wakashima argues that Nabokov uses this card to weave a dense network of musical references into Lolita.

My First Memorable Memory

Why do I remember you?

Fear. To this day you're still the most intense fear I have ever known, not because you were out of my control, but because you were out of the control of my parents. They could do nothing, and knowing this created my violent fear of you. Those protectors, those idolized figures who had never failed me, were also in fear, in pain, and at a loss for what to do.

My dad was on top of me. I think he was telling me everything would be ok but I couldn't hear him. You wouldn't allow me to hear him.

I could hear the screaming of my sister down the hall. The screaming intermingled with the sound of...well, I don't know how to describe you. I suppose I could try and relate you to an elevated train in downtown Manhattan. Residential owners know what it's like to hear the train speed by, right outside their window, at 2:00 am. But if I was to really try and put your sound into words, I know it would be much different than a simple train outside some flat in the slums. You were the sound of shifting foundations, cracking drywall, and crying windows. Oh, the glass was so loud. You were the sound of pain and fear. You placed my heart in my ear drums and mixed it all in a violent crash. You sounded like the earth had crashed. And I felt it.

I also felt you darkness that you so wonderfully brought along for the ride. With it I felt the darkness of my dad carrying me in his arms through the blackness. The halls, the rooms, the entire house was filled with your darkness...and it only helped the sound sink in...it only helped make me hurt. I still, to this day, wonder if it was your motions, your actual movement of everything around me in that darkness, or your sound that shook me most. Either way, you shook me, and then you were gone.

Next it was the candle light and I lying on a bed. My mom was holding my sister at the head of the bed, talking about how her feet were shredded from running through shards of china and broken picture frames in the hall. My sister was crying with a sense of misunderstanding, the type of sobbing that was so easily comforted at the little ages before she could know how frightening you really were. My father was standing, watching the transformers on the horizon, exploding as they overloaded and crashed to the earth. I remember seeing him silhouetted by the city lights as he looked out the double glass doors. I think his words to my mother were, "The transformers are blowing up." In my mind, this created horrid images of giant robotic creatures being blown into smithereens over the glowing city skyline. This frightened me.

My parents tried to comfort me, stop my shivering, but I knew they were just as scared of you as I was.

The house, the one thing that had always protected us from the world outside, now became the weapon of that world. It could have smothered us within its ruins. It could have taken us down the hill it sat upon, dealing death in its own demise. It could have. This fear of the "could have" strikes the right chord into the souls of even the bravest human beings, even my parents.

And so it was that I ended the night lying in the fetal position at the foot of my parent's giant bed, unable to get the vibration of you out of my body. I shuttered as I fought and cried as I slept.

Think about this as you read "Speak, Memory"

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter. -Vladimir Nabokov


Sexson spoke about this while in class last yesterday. I have a feeling that we will continue to have many more discussions upon the topic, and so I will ruminate on my feelings upon it for the time being.

Netiquette - Net Etiquette

"Netiquette (a compound formed from "net etiquette") is a set of social conventions that facilitate interaction over networks, ranging from Usenet and mailing lists to blogs and forums. These rules were described in IETF RFC 1855.^[1] However, like many Internet phenomena, the concept and its application remain in a state of flux, and vary from community to community. The points most strongly emphasized about USENET netiquette often include using simple electronic signatures, and avoiding multiposting, cross-posting, off-topic posting, hijacking a discussion thread, and other techniques used to minimize the effort required to read a post or a thread. Netiquette guidelines posted by IBM for employees utilizing Second Life in an official capacity, however, focus on basic professionalism, maintaining a tenable work environment, and protecting IBM's intellectual property.^[2] Similarly, some Usenet guidelines call for use of unabbreviated English^[3][4] while users of online chat protocols like IRC and instant messaging protocols like SMS often encourage just the opposite, bolstering use of SMS language." -Wikipedia

Sexson is a strong believer in netiquette. He wants the blogs to be as productive, fun, educational and stimulating as possible for the community, while maintaining a sense of professionalism...which means watching ones language, anything durogatory, or off topic (especially when commenting on some one elses blog). It is an important thing to remember and not a hard thing to follow... all ya have to do is not be rude or do anything illegal ;).

How to Create a Blog AND Link your friends

****DISCLAIMER - This step-by-step guide is not perfect, but should help to get you started on your blogging. If you see any major defects, please be sure to leave a comment (or email me) and I will edit it ASAP. Thanks!****

It has become more and more simple as the years go by. When blogging first began, people HAD to know how to write HTML or other computer code in order to get their thoughts and words onto their web page of choice, but because those same people knew that us "commoners" wanted to do it too, they made blogger.com just for us.

Here's the few very easy steps to beginning you blog by using blogger.com:

1. Go to blogger.com and click the big orange button that says "Create Blog". From there you will be on their 1st step, which is to make a google account. If you already have one (I did because I use gmail), you can go back to the main page and log in with that username and password, otherwise they will help you create a google account on that first page. Fill out the respective blank areas and click next.

2. Name your blog. First you will be given the option to make a title for your blog. This will be the first words that everyone sees when someone comes to your page (obviously, mine is Oral Hash), then you will need to put in the address you want people to use when they need to get to your site. All you have to do is type something creative into that box (I type oralhash) but some other examples are: *yourlastname*337oraltraditions, oraloraloral, floraloral, oralforthemasses, sexsonrocks, crazyoraltraditions......or whatever you want. Then fill out the rest of the blank spaces and click next!

3. On this page they give you a few options on templates you can choose. These will be the overall look of your blog. You choose one, fill in any remaining empty boxes, and click the next or finished button (I can't remember which one it is) and then it will take you to make your first blog entry. Type something short or something log - click publish post - then click view blog to go have a looksy at it.From your blog you should be able to do most editing, option changing, etc. from the top right of the page. Only a few little words at the tope, you can click customize to add nifty little pictures, programs, games to the page. Once you click customize, another word, dashboard, pops up at the top right of the page. You can click dashboard and it will take you to your blog editing page where you can look at the many blogs you may or may not have, edit them, delete them, or whatever.For those out there that already had a past blog using blogger.com, the steps are much simpler for creating their blog. All you need to do is sign into your old blog (as if you were going to edit it), click customize, then click dashboard, then click "create a blog" which is right below the language selector. From there it should be recognizable. If not, take a look at my steps above.

*IMPORTANT* Dr. Sexson would like to see at least this one customization on everyones blog if possible. It is the "My Blog List" customization. You can see an example of one by looking at the right side of my blog and seeing the links with our classmates names (of course, mine is title The Blogs of Orality, but it's still My Blog List ;).

You can get it to the side of your blog by doing the following:

1. Log into your blog and while viewing it go to the top right corner of the page and click Customize.

2. When the page with a bunch of empty boxes and boxes that say things like "Blog Posts", "Add A Gadget", "Add A Gadget" then you know your in the right place. Click the "Add A Gadget" blue link that is on the right side of the page, not on the bottom.

3. Once you have done that, a page should pop up that has many different gadgets. "My Blog List" SHOULD be the first one at the top of this page (if it is not, email me and let me know that you need help finding it, or feel free to look around until you do). When you've found it, click the blue + sign to the right of it and it will be added to your blog.

4. Now that you've added it to your blog, and your back at the page with the empty boxes and such, you can actually rearrange gadgets by "dragging" the gadget up or down in that layout. You would do this by clicking and holding the click and dragging the gadget to wear you want it to appear on your main blog page.

5. Once you've got it where you want it, click the blue "Edit" word next to "My Blog List".

6. A page will pop up, and this page will allow you to change the title of your blog list, decide how you want them sorted (I never really mess around with this stuff), decide what you want to show one them, but, MOST IMPORTANTLY, will allow you to add your peers blog addresses onto you blog. (This is the reason MS sends those emails with the blog addresses).

7. So get those addresses from his email, copy and paste those addresses into the box that pops up when you click "Add To List", then click "Add".

8. Once you've added, their blog title will pop up in your blog's list. I find that it's more helpful for other students and the teacher when the title is renamed to the students name, so that we know who's is who's. So click "rename" next to their blog title and type the name of the person who's name is on the email MS sent. Once you've done this, it should be safe to delete MS's email because all that info is now saved on your blog.

9. Once you've gotten all your friends' and peers' blog onto the list, don't forget to add save at the bottom of the page, then click save again when that page will all the funky boxes pops up, and your good to go!

Go look at your blog list on you blog and continue having a blast bloggin' for Oral Traditions!

Here's what he thinks of all of us.....

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.

-Vladimir Nabokov