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