Five Random Thoughts of the Day—May 30, 2009

1. To whoever called me at Barnes & Noble yesterday:
   

   I suppose, Mr. Heavyset, Curly-Haired Guy Who Works At The Movie Theatre, I should be a little flattered that I have a terrific voice. However, when you try to pick up potential romantic partners in the future, a) accept it if they tell you they are not gay, b) do not automatically propose threesomes, and c), most of all, NEVER tell someone you have a special snack for them, to wit a really large hot dog slathered in mayonnaise, EVER AGAIN.
   

2. Back to the Future—a film which takes place on my first birthday—feels like a whole new movie when you watch it with a packed house at the New Beverly and everyone is laughing and cheering and hanging on every word Christopher Lloyd says in the Q&A…including telling Jonathan that Brokeback to the Future is the true part four!
   
3. Breakfast at The Griddle this morning was a great learning experience and a beautiful day out…Lisa and I shared the Golden Ticket and offered chunks up to our companions, still left it unfinished, and came away with (at least on my part) a much lesser food coma.
   
4. We're all leaving. Tyler's going to London, Adam and Chad are looking at New York City, and Mike will probably find a smaller, cheaper abode, meaning the end of Big Pink. It's odd how we came together only to break apart. My theory is that in growing so close, we realized how UNLIKE the rest of Los Angeles we are and how much we needed to get out.
   
5. But …this morning I listened to "Playing in the Band" by the Grateful Dead and realized that the euphoria of this year will be a magnificent comfort and strengthener to me in the days to come.

The First Lecture: “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen

INTRODUCTION

I am an unabashed Jane Austen fan, ever since I read Pride and Prejudice, that great ancestor of all chick lit and romantic comedies, the summer before senior year at Boardman. Nabokov was not a Jane Austen fan, indeed was not a fan of female authors at all. This is my greatest bone of contention with him…if you look at my "favorite novels of all time" list, George Eliot, Doris Lessing, and Ellen Raskin all wrote novels which rocked my foundation. When you consider Middlemarch in particular, which ranks in the top 0.01% of books ever written, Nabokov's prejudice is too much to bear. I know he had a very loving relationship with his wife Vera, but Lolita suggests a negative attitude towards all women in general, bordering on fear. Having strong female personalities write about strong female personalities might have doubly terrified him, the Elizabeths and Dorotheas and Annas who could go toe to toe with his men, informed with full knowledge of feminine psychology.

His very close friend Edmund Wilson considered Austen one of the best six writers in the English language (with Shakespeare, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, John Keats, and Dickens). When Nabokov dismissed Pride and Prejudice out of hand, Wilson suggested Mansfield Park. Nabokov decided to give it a try…and wrote back to Wilson that he had more fun than his students lecturing on it. Judging by the above, I think it satisfied the best of both of Nabokov's worlds. I personally found it to be not as good as Pride and Prejudice, certainly flawed, thus confirming to a degree Nabokov's estimate of the woman writer…however, the best passages of the book are superb enough for Nabokov to give Austen genuine praise, and for my humble self to once again bow in the presence of genius.

Our thoughts on Mansfield Park will become more clear in this series of blog posts. For right now, though, let me just say that upon seeing the DVD of the recent BBC adaptation…there is a clear picture in my head of what, in general, Fanny Price should look like, and Billie Piper is NOT Fanny Price.

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Nabokov stresses that it took Austen two-and-a-third years to compose the 160,000-word, 48-chapter novel. I have no idea why he chose to make this observation at the beginning. Flaubert spent five years crafting the shorter Madame Bovary, so is Nabokov expressing amazement it took Austen so long to write a lesser novel, or that she didn't take too long a period enough? The time it takes to write a story is a small but intriguing matter of interest for the literary analyst. Flaubert and Proust spent years writing sentences which read like poetry, while my hero, Trollope, wrote to so rigid and efficient a schedule that in his urge to tell the story, develop the characters, and keep pressing forward, he would forget ultra-specific details and contradict minor plot events. From personal experience, I completed 100,000 words of a first draft of a novel in six months…it was bad. I took my graphic novel, of 29,000 words, through about thirteen drafts over a twenty-month stretch. It is the greatest thing I have ever composed in my life thus far. A work of fiction needs some deliberation and careful time for revision. Mansfield Park, as we shall see, falls somewhere in the middle, moving from segments of delicate prose to segments which are very unsatisfying and suggest Austen wanted to get things over with.

Nabokov calls the interplay between the Bertrams and the Crawford-Grant family as the "superficial action." The real action—the activity which truly drives the plot to its finish—is in how the characters define themselves according to their inner conscience and principles. The happy endings come for those who either stick to their positive moral codes throughout (Fanny) or ultimately choose them over offered alternatives (Edmund). The sad endings are for those who stick to their negative moral codes (Mrs. Norris) or ultimately choose them over offered alternatives (Henry).

Fanny Price is described as "the author's pet…through whom the story is sifted." Fanny is an underprivileged girl, the poor niece of Lady Bertram—whose maiden name is Ward. Thus in her bloodline, Fanny is a Ward, and figuratively she is a ward as well, a fact which Nabokov automatically picks up on. Lolita is a landmark of meta-textuality and word games, so Nabokov making this connection is no surprise here.

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The "ward," as Nabokov points out, was a common figure in 18^th-and-19^th-century English Lit—think of how many times Dickens used such a figure. David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Little Nell, Esther Summerson. The character functions as one of the most sentimental devices available for a writer. Nabokov identifies three:

1. Easy provoker of reader's empathy…we all have felt at times like outsiders, even in our own families, so to see someone who is both of a family and an outsider all but forces us to react.
   
2. Romantic interest who can answer the great stumbling block of a question for any love story. Robert McKee describes the main conflict of any romance as "What's to stop the boy and girl from getting together after meeting?" If your interloper of a poor relation or charity case falls in love with your own much more well-off offspring, question answered.
   
3. Representative of the author as a "detached observer and participant": a figure who is both in the story but enough outside it as to be able to bring the same pair of new eyes we, the readers, possess. More empathy! Oddly, if we place Mansfield Park in the overall scheme of Austen's career, Fanny does not match the picture of her more typical heroine…Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Fairfax, the talkative, almost flippant, always dreaming-up-something girl with a sensitive, longing heart at the core. Fanny Price is the very definition of purity and goodness (thought wait until we reach Esther Summerson), and Mary Crawford fits the Austen mold much better. Unlike Elizabeth and Emma, though, Mary does not get a moment of clarity and ultimate romantic redemption.
   

"All novels are, in a sense, fairy tales." Nabokov compares this novel to Cinderella, a neglected heroine passed over in the hearts and minds of everyone who ends up with the hero. If Esther is indeed the audience representative, then having her wildest dreams all come true is our own personal wish fulfillment.

But Nabokov does not mean the novel is a fairy tale in the sense that each novel is directly analogous to Andersen or Grimm or some arcane folklore. Like fairy tales, novels are original worlds of their own, worlds where every living thing, every location, every rule, law and custom, are the creation of an original writer. Mansfield Park may be a wish-fulfillment fantasy comparable to most too-good-to-be-true chick lit on today's market, but it is a fantasy which fully conforms to every bit of logic Austen enforces on her story. "There is no such thing as real life for an author of genius: he must create it himself and then create the consequences." This is why the larger-than-life sagas of Dickens, the outlandish wit of Thackeray, the overt romanticism of Fitzgerald, the weighty philosophy of Tolstoy live on forever and so many best-selling thrillers and such which are written with "ultra-realistic" detail are forgotten with last week's newspapers. Their worlds are artificial…but everything in those worlds makes sense when compared to everything else in those worlds…and when that which we recognize from our world intersects with the fictional, the created, is when we establish the human connection necessary to any truly good story. This is possibly the greatest benefit of the created world: when we recognize a meaning or theme which fully applies to our world, such a truth affects us powerfully, as a real oasis in a desert full of mirages

Example: we can read five or ten major intellectual studies on the psychology of desire and come away with a dressed-up scientific definition, what Nabokov called "eloquence masking for ignorance." Then we can read The Great Gatsby, 200 pages or so of straightforward prose on the surface, and we KNOW desire, we KNOW what it is to ache for something or someone so badly all else in life is subsumed to it. In Mansfield Park, we learn what is to be full of self-knowledge and use it to the best of our abilities in a way some people who take years of self-esteem therapy might sadly never learn.

When Nabokov calls this novel "the work of a lady and the game of a child," it is not incongruous with his subsequent praising of it. He is only comparing it to the emotional intensity of Tolstoy and Flaubert…Austen's characters keep their emotions firmly controlled, and the book is as structured as any good game. This especially comes to light in the "play" sequence.

Seven Random Thoughts of the Day—May 28, 2009

1. The art of the Sake Bomb…using chopsticks, precariously balance a full shot glass of good sake over a half-full mug of Kirin or a similar beer. Chant loudly and pound on the table until the shot glass falls in. Immediately drink without stopping. Follow with plenty of consumption of raw fish, vegetables, and rice.
   




2. Kate Alexis Berman is a very good egg, for those of you who don't know her already.
   




3. Lisa Ann Huberman is an even greater egg. (Sorry, Kate…eight years of knowing someone is a trump card.) And our visit to the Getty on Friday was a sort of remake of My Dinner With Andre, a three-hour non-stop conversation while wandering through galleries and gardens, each new vision launching a new train of thought. Lisa can talk about anything and always draw out something remarkable. I NEVER get bored listening…she would be an extraordinarily good college lecturer.
   




4. 
   
   
   
   Adam and I both wish we could go back to an alternate 1960s where Laura Nyro was straight.
   
   
   
   
   

   
   





5. Mike's birthday was yesterday (sake bomb), and I hope we gave him a happy one.
   




6. 
   
   
   
   What nineties TV character should I go as to Mike's birthday party on Saturday? Those were my golden years of TV watching, but the number of characters I identified with could be counted on one hand. I wish I had a trenchcoat to be Inspector Gadget…or could turn myself into a block of wood and go as Stick Stickley.
   
   
   
   
   

   
   





7. 
   
   
   
   What I used to say about Ram—which, though co-credited to his wife, is Sir Paul McCartney's greatest solo album—is that it sounds like Brian Wilson recording Pet Sounds single-handedly in his nonexistent farmhouse. After yesterday, when I had it on while cleaning and cooking around the house, I realized that Ram really sounds like HOME—like rambling conversations and love-fueled celebrations and the terrible puns my dad makes and the stories you hear a million times and never get old and, always under the surface and occasionally pushing through to the fore, expressions of genuine love and regard for the people who mean the most to you. Then you pull out a well-worn guitar and an upright piano to think about it some more…or take somebody off on a jaunt in the back seat of your car…and let the memories flow…I can't wait to go back home. And Ram makes you treasure a place called home by bringing back what it's like to be surrounded by family.
   
   
   
   
   

   
   

A Commentary on the Nabokov Lectures: The Beginning

"I remember a cartoon depicting a chimney sweep falling from the roof of a tall building and noticing on the way that a sign-board had one word spelled wrong, and wondered in his headlong flight why nobody had thought of correcting it. In a sense, we all are crashing to our death from the top floor of our birth to the flat stones of the churchyard and wondering with an immortal Alice in Wonderland at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles—no matter the imminent peril—these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from commonsense and its logic, that we know the world to be good."

I fell in love with Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) when I read Lolita earlier this year and felt my brain grow and expand at the combination of wit, poetry, and heart-wrenching emotion…and of course, the delicate, tender X-ratedness of it all. But one thought which dominated my reaction to Lolita, a thought I shared with everyone I talked to regarding the book, was that it was clearly written by a man who loved books.

Nabokov taught for almost two decades at Wellesley and Cornell (with brief periods at Stanford and Harvard as well) until Lolita made him rich enough to spend the rest of his days spending time with his beloved family, thinking about butterflies, and writing more and more. But like any great writer (which I definitely am not), he saved his notes and correspondence and the teaching copies of the books he lectured on…and the lectures themselves.

From this, editors have fully reconstructed Nabokov's lectures on the novel and short(er) story, and published them in two volumes. In January I acquired the first, which deals with non-Russians, and after my acceptance into graduate school promised myself to read the different books and their accompanying lectures.

The result is that, as a purely literary creature, I now worship at the altar of Nabokov. What he has to say about literature and its greatness and purpose should be shared with as wide an audience as possible.

Therefore, in addition to random musings, my first big project on this blog will be to post my own personal commentary on the first six of the seven lectures. Why not the seventh? Because it deals with Ulysses, and after hearing Carlee Tressel tell me about the joys of taking an entire course on Ulysses and reading and discussing it in a group week after week, I am waiting for a similar opportunity, the same way I waited twenty-two years until the Coolidge Corner showed Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen.

In any case, what is left is more than enough for months of discussion.

And why am I going to spend these months like this, writing what is essentially an expanded riposte with traces of argument and love-letter to a book I think no one else I know has ever read?

Lisa Huberman and I were talking on Friday about the difference between being academically involved with art and actually creating art yourself. My sentiment is that as a college professor (knocking on major wood here), when I teach a book or write an essay on books, I shall be engaged in an act of creation myself…the creation of new ideas in the minds of my students. Terry Eagleton wrote that the only theory we should really deal with in literature is the theory of rhetoric…of how and why a story is, first, told at all, and second, told the way it is told, and how together these considerations produce an intended response in a reader. If I can explain how a novel works, what was put into its creation, why chapters and sentences and characters brush up against each other in the order they do, how certain arrangements and word choices led to a very deliberate meaning, and how these texts were received at publication and in times afterwards and what those receptions said about humanity at that moment in history…I shall be teaching not only an appreciation of art, an appreciation which I think the world needs more than ever as science, technology, business, and meritocracy increasingly hold sway, but also a way to THINK, to analyze and criticize and react both intellectually and emotionally. One book can give one person one idea…which might shake the foundations of society to their core. This may be Romantic, but it is what I believe with all my heart and want to share with my students, that as writers and readers, they are always engaged in doing something important and meaningful.

Vladimir Nabokov, in his dry and whimsical way, was every bit as much a Romantic. The above quotation comes from one of his closing addresses to his classes, where he spoke of literature as a great weapon for goodness against "commonsense," the purely logical approach to life which holds so many people back from doing the extraordinary. He understood literature as an act of creation, a stepping out of time and space to create your own time and space which enchants people you probably will never meet…a way to touch the divine.

I feel a kindred spirit here…and I want to share a bit of what I've experienced with the world, the same way I wish all 8.5 billion of us could listen to Harry Chapin songs (sung by him or their 8.5 billion fathers) and watch Sir David Lean's movies on the big screen and sit in live theatres watching William Shakespeare's genius be enacted before your eyes and look at Monet and Rauschenberg paintings until the color and sense overwhelm us.

And, a bit selfishly, I want to put down how I think on paper so I can remember it this year when I'll need every bit of strength I have to survive in Chicago.

It should not be necessary to read Nabokov before reading these blog postings. In case you want to follow along, though, all references come from:

Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov, 1980, A Harvest Book from Harcourt, Inc., San Diego, New York, and London. ISBN 9780156027755

The first six pages contain Nabokov's ideas on what makes a good writer and a good reader. I mused on these before on my previous blog, and now share an edited version of those comments.

What leaps out at me from the first in this discussion is his insistence that one cannot read a book but only REREAD it. The first time we tackle a text, we are concerned with running our eyes across the page through time, working at getting it all down. In contrast, our eyes stay still and focused for fixed periods when observing a painting or a film. Only after we have fully covered a novel can we go back and stop at passages, linger, reflect, and grasp meaning. Recent excursions into re-reading favorite texts of my own have revealed this to be true. Boswell , Fitzgerald, and Trollope, all offer so much more rewards both in detail and textual analysis when we go back and reread them. I never noticed, for instance, the yearning style of Nick's criticisms of Gatsby or the way Hamilton Fisker's scruples stand in opposition to Augustus Melmotte's lack thereof in subtle pictures of card games and financial advice-giving, until I delved deeper into The Great Gatsby and The Way We Live Now. This leads to a disclaimer: since I have read all these books I'm about to comment on only once, Nabokov himself would say my commentary should be swallowed with several grains of salt. I would have to agree.

Nabokov also asserts that "the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense." We cannot change the qualities of imagination or memory we were born with. We may always go out and buy a dictionary. Sense, Nabokov believed and I affirm, can be developed with committed aesthetic training and recognition. I could tell you exactly why Middlemarch is a great leap forward from The Mill on the Floss and why most young-adult novels, though good stories, are not candidates for "literature." Imagination and memory…people tell me I possess them in spades. Disney felt that they could die without exercise, so I try to exercise them as much as possible.

Thus, I want to believe I am a good reader. On the other hand, I have been guilty in the past of Nabokov's cardinal sin: imagination to the extent of recognition or identification, worst of all identifying with a character in a book. In the cases of the second and third best novels I ever read, Konstantin Levin and William Dobbin emerged as people I truly related to, much the same way my caring for Alvy Singer pushes Annie Hall to the top of my "favorite films of all time" list. I believe that the power of literature comes through in personal interpretation and grasp of meaning. Nabokov, I feel, agrees, but stops short of saying that the reader must turn the book into a completely personal text. This limits understanding. He suggests combining the passion of an artist with the detached, observant patience of a scientist when reading a novel or story, never letting one subsume the other.

The difference in our opinions might be semantic. Nabokov was born at the end of the 19^th century, when people were rushing out to copy the behavior of the Romantics, and came of age in the 1920s when Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Miller were describing a new, easily adapted lifestyle. What Nabokov stresses is that fiction is great because it IS fiction—it is made up. It encompasses the details of a period but IN NO WAY should ever be taken as an accurate description of the period. The "truth" of fiction is in the theme and message. It is similar to Marcus J. Borg's brilliant interpretation of the Bible as stories where we're not sure if they happened that way, but we know they are true. When we identify with a story or a character to the point where we give all the more weight to their details, we run the risk of taking the least truthful part of a story and turning it into the MOST truthful. To use a cliché which I am sure will result in one day having Nabokov kick my ass in the hereafter, we overlook the forest for the trees.

I think personal identification with a character helps a reader find all the more rewards in a story, but I sympathize with Nabokov's perspective because I don't think I could spend years and years pining for a girl like Amelia Sedley (Dobbin) or ruining all my female relationships from neurosis (Alvy) or become so consumed with intellectual definitions of faith and love that it would become something of a self-centered ordeal to sit at my dying brother's bedside (Levin). And yet I still want to pursue their ideals of faith as a central tenet of existence and love as the most powerful of emotions, the one which must win the day despite it all.

In the end, Nabokov says a great writer writes great stories in the roles of inventor, teacher, and enchanter, combining poetry, lesson, and magic. We are captivated by what the Formalists would call the beautiful inversions of language, we draw philosophical insight and moral strength from their meanings, and ultimately fall under the spell of their creation. To bring this full circle to my talk with Lisa, all human beings need to experience such magic on a regular basis. Sometimes we need a little cultivation to be receptive to this possibility. I want to cultivate.

Introduction: What You're Going to Find

During college, I tried and failed to keep diaries.
I started my first blog in May 2007 and maintained it with regularity until July 2008, when I found that real life was even more interesting when simply lived as opposed to writing about it.
But now...as I get ready to begin my studies at the University of Chicago...I realize I wanted a place where I could share all things I think deeply about and get the feedback and new perspectives which will only make me a better person.
A few things...
1) A LOT of my postings will be about literature. If you don't like literature, I apologize...and happily let you know I also am starting to Twitter!
2) I'm not promising a schedule of regular postings...I do promise to post as often as I can. Everything I type up that seems really and truly profound, will find its way on here. I might post every day for a month. I might stop for a month. But I shall not ignore this completely.
3) PLEASE feel free to share any and all comments through comments and e-mails at Andrew.Rostan@gmail.com! I want to hear from all of you.
And yes, I started not with this but my favorite books of all time...just letting you know what you're in for.

Prologue: The Reading List

The lists are alphabetical by author, except for the title at the top of each. Mr. Fitzgerald, in 200 pages, chronicles everything which makes us human and makes us love and drives us forward to do more than merely exist. Mr. Shabazz and Mr. Haley profoundly altered the course of my life. And there is not enough room for me to talk about Mr. Boswell. Without their words, I would be a diminished person.That being said...you should read as much of the following as you can. All of you.

THE SINGLE GREATEST BOOK I EVER READ IN MY LIFE
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
FIFTEEN FAVORITE WORKS OF FICTION
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Bowl of Cherries by Millard Kaufman
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
TEN FAVORITE WORKS OF NON-FICTION
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz as told to Alex Haley
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Bill Graham Presents by Bill Graham with Robert Greenfield
The Four Witnesses by Robin Griffith-Jones
Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties by Ian McDonald
Excerpts from the Writings of John Stuart Mill
Essays by Michel de Montaigne
Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov
Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association by Terry Pluto
The Modern Mind by Peter Watson
TEN FAVORITE POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS
W. H. Auden
Geoffrey Chaucer
Thomas Gray
John Keats
Andrew Marvell
Eugene O'Neill
Joe Orton
Sir Harold Pinter
Virgil
Oscar Wilde
TWO WRITERS YOU SHOULD JUST GO OUT AND READ EVERYTHING BY
William Shakespeare
Anthony Trollope

Andrew Rostan is Not responsible for any complaints or refunds if you buy these books and don't like them.