Individual Presentations (Day 1 and 2)

Over the past few class periods, I have been taking lots of notes on individual presentations. I just know, Dr. Sexson will sneak some Nabokovian questions relating to some of this on the next exam. The following is a copy of what notes I have. (I apologize if I get anyone's names wrong or mispell them).

Day One:

Jared: (Et in Witt Ego) R acts as a guide through Transparent Things. Jared equates this character with Mercury or Hermes. He is also a personification of death. R is a narrator outside of time; death incarnate.

Jessica: (beauty and pity) focus on characters in Lolita and Pale Fire. Beauty and Pity give to one another and helps us understand or interpret the work. Humbert is trapped in a web of his own fantasy. Tangible sincerity.

Kris: (unreliable narrator) Unconventional novels. We have to look between the lines to see that is actually happening-->more like life than a mere novel. Annabelle then 25 years later comes Lolita (the new Annabelle) who breaks the curse (or perpetuates it??) of the former. The narration challenges the reader through deception, self-awareness, and the overall journey.

Rebecca: (unconsciousness, consciousness, and reality in Transparent Things) Rebecca made an entire slide show to accompany her presentation. Some key concepts: Unconscious taking over the conscious mind. Unconscious state blurring lines of reality. Extending ownership to the readers with phrases like "our person". (reality and fiction mixing). Nabokov--Punctuation provides hints. "To read and understand Nabokov is to have a spine"-->audacity.

Riley: (The Original of Laura) He read the novel 4 times to write this trail-blazing paper. There are 2 dominant narrators (Philip Wilde and Flora--Laura). Parts are written as a first-person manuscript. Other narrator=Eric. Basically, I felt Riley raised questions of the narrative voice in this novel, going into the fluidity and elusive quality of multiple narrators existing at the same moment in time that is many moments.

Jennie Lynn: (Edgar Allen Poe and Nabokov) Both have an "obsession with amorphous nuances of being and reality". Both have a certain fixation on death. Both blur the lines between life and death. Being, death, and dreams are important as the 3 states both are interested in.

Amanda: (short story on Gradus) Gradus reads Pale Fire after it was published and finds out he made a mistake. He comes back to finish the job.

Zach Smith: (Speak, Memory and the two eternities of darkness) Zach talks about Nabokov's infatuation with life after death and that spark of electricity that is souls departed.

Brittany: (Kinbote-esque commentary on Canto 1 of Pale Fire) Much like Kinbote, Brittany used the poem as a basis to relate stories of her own life. One was about a bird that flew into the window of her car and was killed while she was on her way to the beach. The other excerpt was about falling off her bike and being assisted by a kindly old man (who she now knows was John Shade watching her and gaining information for his poem which is ACTUALLY based on her life) =)

Zach Morris: (Lolita and Frankenstein) Humbert is paralleled by Frankenstein's monster. Their obsessions are affecting others. Both show a slow development of guilt that comes with further realization.-->forms basis for personal accountability. Both are isolated from society and destroy themselves with their obsessions.

Emily: (Kinbote and Shade talking about God??) Emily did her presentation before writing the paper, so we got to see all the aspects of the novels she was investigating and weaving together. Here are a few: Wes Anderson movies (Royal Tannenbaums) they are obsessed with ridiculous things and we love them for it. Obsession and admiration (compassion and pity) going hand in hand. She referenced the quote "things are beautiful if you love them". We make them beautiful by loving them, but we are influenced as well.

Janna: (One perspective) The only way that we know the characters in any of the novels is through the voice of Humbert or Kinbote, etc., all unreliable narrators. In Speak, Memory, how do we know any of it is "true"?? We are forced to sympathize with unlovable characters; otherwise, we cannot read the book, because the only voice is their voice.

Alicia: (3-7-7-3) Further analysis of Pale Fire. She cited TONS of information relating to this concept, and if you will remember, the book she was using was simply filled with notes and highlighted sections, etc. An interesting detail or discovery was the fact that there are 4 species of Atalanta butterfly-->4 cantos of the poem. She talked in detail of the Vanessa Anabella (Anabelle, anyone?!)

Day Two:

Lee: (mirrors and reflections) She primarily focused on Pale Fire. These mirrors and reflections form layers upon layers building the texture of the work.

Aaron: (characters) Nabokov used pieces of his own life to create his characters and worlds. Aaron cited Vivian Darkbloom, John Shade and the fact that he too writes on notecards, and the numerous immigrant characters in the novels. Interesting fact--in Zembla, there is a river named after a member of Nabokov's family.

Robert: ("Nabokov the Necromancer") Nabokov communicates with the dead but also brings them to life. His characters are dead before the story even begins (Shade, Hazel, Humbert Humbert, Lolita, etc.). Memory, divinity, and illusion "influence people from beyond the looking glass"

Lisa: ("Nabokov and the Vale of Soulmaking") Development of the soul is a major theme in her presentation. She brings in the works of Keats and Thomas More to illustrate this in regards to Nabokov's works, speaking primarily of Lolita and Pale Fire. The butterfly represents Psyche (the soul); its metamorphoses echoes the metamorphoses of the soul. The Vale of Soulmaking is a work by Keats and talks about the activity of living which is the very making of the soul.

Helena: ("coincidences, connections, and clues in Lolita") The five major coincidence she outlines in the paper are: Annabel Lee, the Ramsdale Class List, 342, Quilty's clues, and Fate. In reference to the class list, she talked about Viola, part of a set of fraternal twins, (who echoes Viola and Sebastian of Twelfth Night). She referenced Adam's discovery about Kenneth Knight as well (see his blog).

James: (Index on Transparent Things) James gave the class teasers from his full index, which, if I may be permitted to say, is a huge undertaking. Off the top of my head, here were a few of the concepts he referenced (though he didn't give much away...for that you will have to read the index). Anastasia, Kronig, The Denton Butterfly Collection (and Wellesley college), the number 3 and its relation to the novel (3 stories, 3 tenses, 3 meanings), pg. 505 and the novel Armande is reading.

Kyle: (metamorphoses of John Shade by way of fountains and mountains) He relates the act of epiphane not to knowing, but to unknowing. Initially, he wanted to focus on the religious influence in Nabokov and that iconology in his work, but then focused on how Shade becomes content with the unknown and with that state of unknowing. This is achieved through his art-->understanding existence at least a little-->"beauty and pity" of art. somehow the "unknowable is tolerable".

Rachel: (Nabokov's obsession with memory) Rachel spoke of the quote of how the novelist is more at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past. (tension film so bugs can walk on it). Lolita--time and love alter memories (Annabelle-->Lolita Love causes a distortion). Time adds "new flavor to recollections". Rachel says that in Speak, Memory Nabokov seems to overcome the pitfalls of his main characters by not sinking into the past and into memories in order that he may create timeless works. "Into the Abyss of Memory" is the title of her essay.

Victoria (?): (Similarities between Humbert and Nabokov) The act of writing and Lolita. Treatment of memory.

Joan Goss: (Gradus made from imagination of Kinbote) Gradus is born from the poem. Words of imagination form Gradus. Kinbote waits for a more competent Gradus; Joan Goss says you only have to ask....JG.

Doug: (Zodiacal themes in Transparent Things) What a compelling presentation! I'm sure the entirety of the class enjoyed falling into the deep fathoms of Douglas' madness. Doug talked about the changing seasons and their relation to Hugh Person's visits to Switzerland and to his life. Hugh comes up lacking in every "amorous adventure" he undertakes making him Virgo (the virgin). On the opposite side of the spectrum is Armande Charmar (?) "a man charmer" who Doug equates with Pisces. Pisces symbol is two fish intertwined representing the eternal progression of life and death. He cites a myriad of fish references in relation to Armande, one of them being the Herringbone pattern on her skis. Above these two is Julia to whom Doug assigns the sign of Cancer. (between june and july is julia-->this is the time where cancer reigns). This is also the time when the sun loses its power symbolizing death. Doug cites arson references in relation to Julia. Below her is R representing the winter equinox, a time of death and rebirth. He is the ghost narrator (life after death). Also: Armande is part of the old Russian aristocracy (does Julia have it in for her?); Julia travels a lot (communist ties related to arsonist tendencies?); Shoebox reference in relation to Hugh and R (possible spies??)

Sam: (Hermetic trickery of Vladimir Nabokov) Trickster. (Quilty is to Humbert as Nabokov is to reader). As a trickster god, Nabokov moves between heaven and earth, the living and the dead. Nabokov presents no moral figures. She talks of the epiphane of experience rather than meaning.

Adam: ("Based on a Misprint") Adam read a foreword to his paper written by a suspicious character, a certain "DAME NASBON" (now....rearrange the letters.....) that had both humor and substance. The paper is very Kinbote-esque. Dame Nasbon calls Adam a "shining example of academic leprosy" =) Adam said he utilized a lot of experimental writing techniques in the paper, at one point even stepping out of the paper to confront the reader. He cited a quote by James Joyce in Ulysses which reads, " A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery". Adam says that awareness and attention in the good reader leads him not to be trapped in the web but rather leads him to somewhere new.

Parker: (Screenplays of Pale Fire) Parker wrote screen adaptations or interpretations of Pale Fire and read a few excerpts for the class. He says he realized that Pale Fire would not make a good movie as it would be primarily composed of voice-overs from Kinbote. He also mentioned how after reading through his writings he realized that "nothing has happened". He read to us from a few scenes of his interpretation of how Gradus would act. In one scene, he is pictured as a "sick bastardization of a Humphrey Bogart charater". Parker says while Kinbote was inventing Zembla and Gradus, he must have been watching some pretty cliché spy movies. His interpretation of Gradus was extremely humorous and enjoyable to conjur from his written descriptions.



>Only one more day of individual presentations to go, and I'm sure that those presentations will be just as compelling as the ones we've seen so far. More notes to come.