Dark but delicious.

Clare Quilty – Snow White

Shalom Harlow by David LaChapelle

Now-defunct Charlottesville, VA rockers Clare Quilty have a cool, industrial-cum-punk, girl-fronted sound like Garbage or Snake River Conspiracy. They took their name from the character in the Nabokov novel and subsequent film adapations (in which his part was considerably beefed up) of Lolita. It seems that they parted ways after just a couple albums. I’ll come back to them another day because they had a cool sound and I’m not totally clear on what happened with their breakup (it was news to me when I went to grab their official site link and it was down … then when I cruised the wiki, it said they’d split).

This track, “Snow White,” comes from their second LP, Strong, and at first seems to be about getting murdered during rape, but I think if you listen carefully there’s a case to be made that it’s actually about a twisted relationship, or just some good old-fashioned masochistic consensual sex.

How can I get away from you?
Why must I watch the things you do?
What does it mean that you want a piece,
to my shattered skull and my broken knees?

“Snow White” by Maagda Lenka on deviantart.com

Oh, oh,
Oh, oh,
Snow White
Snow White

How can you say that you want the truth
when the words in which I’ve spoken are far from you?
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Let’s beat Jack with a candlestick

“Snow White” by Jozy Chen on deviantart

Oh, oh,
Oh, oh,
Snow White
Snow White

Oh, oh,
Oh, oh,
Snow White
Snow White

“Snow White: The Poison Apple” by Cyril Helnwein on deviantart

How can I be all the things you want me to
with my twisted neck and my fingers blue
Your voice in my throat, your rage in my pants
my movements suggest an obedient dance

Oh, oh,
Oh, oh,

Oh, oh,
Oh, oh,
Snow White
Snow White

by Courtney Brims

Either way. Love: sometimes it is a poisoned apple.

It appears that Library Journal has not yet published its review of The Original of Laura. I was hoping to find out how librarians are reacting to the idea of investing in a book that invites mutilation on the part of the reader, due to the “punch-out” index cards with perforated outlines.

In my quest through LJ’s website, I did find that editor Barbara Hoffert has been on the job with copious and pertinent pre-pub information, including a note posted 9/15 on the existence of a library edition with nonremovable index cards.

Find the library edition listing on Amazon here.

A cruise through Amazon also reveals the existence of a so-called “deckle edge edition,” though the deckle edges (i.e. ragged, untrimmed thumb edge) seem inimical to the idea of shuffling through the pages of the book, with or without the cards still intact.

Deeper in the LJ pre-pub alerts is this tidbit from July 15: “a six-city tour—by Dmitri, of course.” This presumably was curtailed by Dmitri Nabokov’s current state of health.

But back to the perforations. I found in my own reading copy that no amount of care could prevent some of the cards from detaching at their inner edge, the one most stressed by proximity to the binding—especially near beginning and end of book. This is the sort of thing that production managers ordinarily try to pre-test with blank paper samples, and it could have been easily solved by running the cards closer to the outer edge of the page, for example with the rightmost edge of each card constituting the trim edge of the book itself. Not as elegant perhaps, but better for the shelf life of the book.

My copy of The Original of Laura arrived yesterday! Only had enough time for a tentative glance-through so far (even though there is actually very little text in it). Was pleased to find that the date on the front page is “2008″. The book is very heavy, even for a hardback, because the original index cards are reproduced inside (alongside typeset text) on thick, cardboard-like paper – the edges of these photographs are perforated so that these copies of the cards can be removed and rearranged in any fashion (or lost, which would seem like their more obvious fate). The novel turns out to be even less “finished” than I expected (I haven’t read any of the reviews). As someone who has never had the fortune to come into contact with larger portions of Nabokov’s manuscripts (just small reproductions in various books), I found it a true joy to leaf through this book. The scholar in me is absolutely enthralled, what a wonderful chance to examine Nabokov’s work in progress! However, I think that the novel might be of limited interest to the “general reader”, at least not in its present edition (sort of like Nabokov’s EO commentary). I may be wrong though, perhaps in the end it is more of a Ulysses than a Finnegans Wake – I haven’t yet read all of it, after all.

Nabokov’s posthumously-published, final, unfinished novel is reviewed in the Times. The review is as incomplete as the book. I’m a die-hard Nabokovian, but I won’t touch this one until I’ve read the rest of his stuff several times. Books should never undergo prenatal exploratory surgery, to paraphrase the author.

Anyone who knows me very well knows that I am obsessed with Vladimir Nabokov. I read Lolita for the first time my senior year of high school and found his portrait of America grotesque, absurd and absolutely accurate, even fifty years later. I have since been slowly devouring his literary legacy, one book at a time, and taking notes along the way. I turn to his later works for inspiration and his early short stories for reassurance that even geniuses have humble beginnings.

I hold the opinion that it is difficult for a novel to get any better than Lolita, but I think Ada or Ardor might actually surpass it. I read the majority of Ada the summer I was living in DC, with my legs dangling in the sky blue water of my apartment’s strangely shaped pool. I firmly believe that this was the best possible way to absorb Ada. While the sun ate away at my intellect and turned my shoulders the color of apricots, I was able to simply let the novel, with it’s delectable sun-drenched imagery, seep into me.

I like to quote probably the only literary critic I consistently agree with, John Leonard, in discussing Ada:

Nobody else could have written an antideterministic masterpiece, contemptuous of Freud (there is no guilt) and Marx (there are no politics, no economics, not even any history), that is at once a sexual and philosophical romance, a brilliant science-fiction, an awesome parody and a gigantic punundrum that would wake up Finnegan.

I found this video about Nabokov a while ago, and it is definitely one of my favorite arbitrary internet discoveries. The note cards he refers to as “The Texture of Time” will later become Ada or Ardor. (Also, don’t worry, it’s not all in French.)

Comparing Faulkner to “when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair”? What an amazing cocky bastard.

I have been obviously thinking more and more about my paper. I thought it would be interesting to actually look up the words pity and beauty to see how they are defined singularily. Because they are a plethora of ways to interpret the role of beauty and pity in Nabokov’s characters and themes, I was curious to see what dictionary.com had to say. Here are my findings:

Beauty–noun, plural -ties. 

 1. the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).

 2.  beautiful person, esp. a woman.

 3. a beautiful thing, as a work of art or a building.   

Pity- noun

 1. sympathetic or kindly sorrow evoked by the suffering, distress, or misfortune of another, often leading one to give relief or aid or to show mercy: to feel pity for astarving child. 

 2. a cause or reason for pity, sorrow, or regret: What a pity you could not go!

 3.  to feel pity or compassion for; be sorry for; commiserate with.

In New York on November 16, 2009, the night before the official publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Original of Laura, the 92nd Street Y’s Poetry Center held a “Celebration of Nabokov.” The program was as follows:

1. Before and after the spoken portion of the evening, ticketholders queued up to view a vitrine that contained the 138 index cards, soon to be auctioned by Christie’s. The cards are individually mounted and bound in a manner that resembles the printed book. About a dozen of them had been removed so that they could be read through the glass. A Christie’s representative stood guard. It was a bit like viewing the Hope Diamond or the Mona Lisa, take your pick. One half expected a Bat-villain to drop out of the ceiling and make off with the goods.
2. After an announcement about the event being podcast and other prefatory remarks by the Poetry Center director, we heard a recording from one of Nabokov’s last speaking appearances in America (or anywhere), when he read at the Poetry Center during a return visit from Switzerland in the 1960s. A fine reading of The Ballad of Longwood Glen.
3. Brian Boyd, Nabokov’s biographer, described his six “initial disappointments” on first reading the index cards many years ago. Boyd then went on to demolish his own objections, point by point.
4. Martin Amis, described by BB as having been “a stern young writer” when MA published an uncomplimentary review of Nabokov’s last completed novel, Look at the Harlequins!, in 1974, then spoke. Amis focused almost entirely on VN’s extremely slim but potent body of allusions to the Holocaust. At the time, it was not clear why Amis was choosing not to speak about Laura. A few days later, I learned that his talk was an expansion of a portion of his Guardian review of Laura, where he is generally hostile to the book. Perhaps like Bambi’s friend Thumper, Amis had decided if he didn’t have anything nice to say not to speak at all on the subject.
5. Book designer Chip Kidd read excerpts from VN’s many letters to publishers in which he objected to aspects of his book covers. This was a launching pad for Kidd’s own explanation of the decisions he made as designer of the printed Laura.
6. Finally, Boyd returned and read extracts from the index cards. He made a point of saying he was reading from his photocopies of the cards themselves, not the typeset transcription. I think this is important in establishing how deep and privileged Boyd’s acquaintance with the text is, and therefore how compellingly his performance animated Nabokov’s words.
7. Barnes & Noble was set up in the lobby with early bird copies of Laura for sale. Since the auditorium emptied out around 10pm, it would have been possible to complete the Laura experience by reading the entire book’s modest word count before midnight.

You can watch a podcast of the entire two-hour Celebration here.

Quite the methodical win for the Sharks as they defeated the Anaheim Ducks 3-2. The Sharks are two-for-two against Anaheim this season, and while this game wasn’t as dominating as the first, the result was the same: a win. Also remember this is the second time San Jose beat Anaheim at Anaheim.

It was KISS night in Anaheim. I can’t think of a stupider promotion. I was forcefed two makeup artists during the Ducks broadcast. I will say the makeup was more fun to look at than listening to the commentators.

There wasn’t anything flashy about this game; it was all hard work and determination. Both teams made mistakes — of course a few Sharks giveaways in their own zone stick out to me. But I’ve come to expect that, unfortunately, from the Sharks.

Douglas Murray was bad tonight. Don’t let the +1 rating fool you. He had so many giveaways and positioning errors — one of them led directly to a goal ten seconds later. He also took a penalty late in the second period, and the Ducks converted 11 seconds later. Dan Boyle was just a step behind tonight and couldn’t cover for Murray’s mistakes.

Frazer McLaren and George Parros get busy. (From SJSHARKS.com)

Things were frisky early with a quick fight out of the gates: Frazer McLaren vs. George Parros. Frazer won the first half of the fight, and Parros won the second half. Draw. Good to see Frazer making an impact with such a minute amount of ice time.

It looked to be another boring, close game after a scoreless first period. But the red lights were tiring out from four goals in the second. Ryane Clowe got on the board with a shot from the point. It’s his second straight goal from the point. Not the place you usually see him scoring from, but hey, whatever works.

Dany Heatley scored to keep his title of goal-scoring leader (18). It came off a Joe Thornton shot and rebound. I don’t think Anaheim was expecting Joe to shoot after his passes last game. That’s probably why the play worked.

But Anaheim hung in there, leaving the second period tied at 2-2.

The third period resembled the first, and I started getting deja vu; the game looked a lot like the playoff series between these two from last year. The difference? The Sharks were the ones who willed a goal out of themselves. Heater played passer and found Thornton coming up the side. Jumbo pocketed the puck perfectly to the far side to put the Sharks up for good.

People questioned coach Todd McClellan’s move to keep Evgeni Nabokov in goal for back-to-back games. He didn’t look as sharp as he usually does, but he was competent enough to earn the W. He’ll get a long rest because the Sharks won’t play again until Wednesday.

Other Notes

Hit-O-Meter: SJ 20  ANA 19; Scott Nichol (4) and Joe Thornton (3) led the team.

Every Sharks player who was on the ice for an Anaheim goal redeemed themselves; No Shark had a negative +/-.

The Sharks battle the Blackhawks, Wednesday at HP Pavilion.

–Ray

THE ROAD … is finally coming out!

The film version of The Road has crept into my mind an average of 0.8 times per day since they pulled that fake-out non-release last fall.

Quoth Mary Pols (of Time magazine): “I read McCarthy’s lean, brutalizing novel in one unhappy gulp 15 months ago and only recently began to consider myself healed.”

So, the movie’s just in time. It comes out the day before Thanksgiving, lest we forget that cheap feasts will not be a given for all time.

But what’s this I hear … there’s more? A new Almodovar movie with Penélope Cruz, a book of essays by Zadie Smith, and fragments of Nabokov’s unfinished novel?

(Aside: There are two people in this world that I could watch for hours, without the help of prescription or illegal drugs. They are Marlon Brando and Penélope Cruz. If offered a deal where I had to give up my entire life, all its promises and relationships and accoutrements, to ride around, say, in a cell on either of their faces, I would have to consider it. Kind of like Robert Johnson’s trade with the devil, although a bit less lucrative. Especially considering that skin cells are shed and regenerated faster than you can say “creepy fandom.”)

But yes — we live in a bizarre world where there are more works of art and intellect than one could ever hope to experience even in a Guinness-Book lifetime. The Road, Broken Embraces, Changing My Mind, and The Original of Laura, all in one week? Do I realize this? Do I appreciate it? There are times when being alive, being human — the fact that the atmosphere conspired to accomodate such existence, the fact that we have these wonderful crevices and curves soaked with sensation and beauty in our big watery brains — feels acutely like a miracle. It sounds trite to say, but when you feel it, it’s not trite at all.

All I have to say about the upcoming week is — not a compulsory, bowed-headed thanks, but — Yes! YES!!! Jism Crisp on a corndog, YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

NABOKOV, L’ORIGINALE DI LAURA, ADELPHI

Vede finalmente la luce, a poco più di trent’anni dalla scomparsa di Vladimir Nabokov, il suo ultimo romanzo incompiuto, a lungo oggetto di insaziabile curiosità da parte di lettori e critici. Sentendo avvicinarsi la fine, nel 1977 lo scrittore raccomandò alla moglie di distruggere le 138 schede manoscritte cui era affidata la prima stesura dell’Originale di Laura qualora non fosse riuscito a completarlo. Véra Nabokov, tuttavia, non ebbe cuore di rispettare tale volontà, e alla sua morte, nel 1991, il peso della scelta ricadde sul figlio Dmitri, che per decenni si è dibattuto nel dubbio se ottemperare o meno alla richiesta. Da ultimo, è prevalsa la decisione di rendere pubblico «un capolavoro embrionale i cui bozzoli di genio cominciavano a trasformarsi in crisalide qua e là sulle sue onnipresenti schede» e che ci immette direttamente nello straordinario laboratorio nabokoviano. Oscuro eppure festante, dominato da un giocoso concetto della morte e da una beffarda visione dei riti mondani, L’originale di Laura ruota intorno a un romanzo nel romanzo, ovvero Laura, di cui è ispiratrice la ventiquattrenne Flora, capriccioso e sensuale alter ego di Lolita. Accanto a lei, fra i molti personaggi delineati con rapidi tratti folgoranti, spicca il marito Philip Wild, neurologo e docente di fama sedotto da nuovi esperimenti sulle cellule nervose capaci di indurre una graduale ancorché reversibile estinzione del corpo. Nabokov gioca qui, per l’ultima volta, ad affacciarsi sull’abisso dell’ineluttabile fine, ma come sempre trasforma la morte in un atto revocabile che, giunto l’istante fatale, evapora nelle magie dell’illusionismo. Gioca con la strenua aspirazione a dominare la vita e l’immortalità per poi rivelarci che «morire è divertente». Gioca con un labirinto di specchi dove i confini tra realtà e finzione sono aboliti e ciascuno si ritrova a vagare da solo

Vladimir Nabokov never finished The Original of Laura, and even requested that the manuscript be destroyed. Now, the book finds itself in publication, and that raises the question – is that a good thing or not?

After a 30-year wait Vladimir Nabokov’s “The Original of Laura” has finally been published by Penguin Modern Classics.

And what is it? Crassly, it is Nabokov’s internal synopsis for a novel. The jotted notes and ideas for a book he was going to write some time in the future.

It is a collection of the index cards that he used for his own memory, and therefore it is not a story at all. It is merely the loose thinking of a man; a grocery list of things that may or may not end up in a book.

Nabokov wanted this destroyed. I can understand why. After all, it has no meaning outside the mind of one individual. It can never be used to recreate what Nabokov had in mind. It can not be used to write the book “Laura”.

Then it becomes a question of why it was published. Would I want my notes and stuff published after my death? Some relatives of writers have made it an industry to publish notes, journals, essays from their dead author parents or relatives. Christopher Tolkien comes to mind. I fall to the line that I can not see the point because things based on my notes, but written by someone else will not be my work.

The same is true with Vladimir Nabokov. What exist in the little book is notes that create an impression that is filtered through another individual’s reasoning and emotion. Therefore, it will not be Nabokov at all. And, ultimately, publishing serves no purpose.

Publishing can be suspected of being speculative, considering that Nabokov wrote Lolita, and publishing it becomes quite pointless.

It’s been a rough year in terms of pissing on the legacies of departed authors. This sort of thing isn’t new; Brian Herbert has been kicking down his father’s sand castles for decades. 2009 has seen a pandemic, though. Eoin Colfer (admittedly a solid children’s author) added an entirely superfluous sequel to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Sebastian Faulks is writing “as Ian Fleming,” Brendan Sanderson is the bearer of Robert Jordan’s literary estate (though my Wheel of Time-loving friends actually say that Mr. Sanderson is reining in Jordan’s excesses quite handsomely), and now this.

Vladimir Nabokov was a perfectionist almost to the point of madness. Attention to detail is one of the salient traits of his writing, so it’s no surprise that he put a clause in his will asking that his unfinished work be burned upon his death. Now, thirty-two years after his death, his son Dmitri has released (in a handsomely-bound Chip Kidd cover, of course) the 138 index cards of notes and drafts for The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun), the book he was working on when he died. Whatever happened to respecting the wishes of the dead? What’s worse, the critical consensus seems to be that it just isn’t that good. Tracking down an author’s juvenilia for the benefit of research is one thing, but trotting out the unfinished musings of a man writing in his deathbed just seems cruel.

Nabokov escribiendo durante un paseo por Nueva York

NUEVA YORK.- Los manuscritos de “El original de Laura”, la novela que el escritor ruso Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) dejó inacabada a su muerte, saldrán a subasta en Nueva

 York el próximo diciembre, anunció hoy la casa de subastas Christie’s.

“Se trata de los originales que escribió Nabokov”, confirmó uno de los portavoces de la conocida firma británica en la Manhattan, donde el 4 de diciembre se pondrá a la venta un objeto “extremadamente escaso en el mercado” por un precio que ha sido estimado entre 400.000 y 600.000 dólares.

La obra, que mañana publicarán la editorial Knopf en Estados Unidos y la casa Penguin en el Reino Unido, es el último texto en el que trabajó el conocido autor de “Lolita”, quien plasmó sus ideas sobre la obra en una serie de tarjetas que, según pidió a su esposa Vera y a su hijo Dmitri antes de morir, debían ser destruidas.

Durante treinta años y tras la muerte de la esposa en 1991, el hijo de Nabokov evitó tener que destrozar la obra inconclusa de su padre, que ahora, además de quedar plasmada en un libro póstumo, podrá comprarse en una subasta que Christie’s dedica a manuscritos y rarezas literarias.

Novela escrita en tarjetas

Se trata de 138 tarjetas escritas a lápiz, que contienen numerosas correcciones y anotaciones del autor, y que están en un “excelente estado de conservación”, según cuentan los responsables de la subasta en la página web de Christie’s, donde se define a Nabokov como “uno de los más grandes literatos del siglo XX”.

Esas tarjetas, que se habían guardado en una caja fuerte en Suiza hasta ahora, componen, según Christie’s, “el último florecimiento del arte maduro de Vladimir Nabokov, la quintaesencia de su espíritu creativo”.

“Es probablemente la única oportunidad existente para hacerse con una importante obra de Nabokov”, añaden los expertos de la casa de subastas, quienes relatan que el autor trabajó incansablemente en sus últimos años para completar una novela donde “la muerte y la vida” eterna son los temas clave.

Con el subtítulo de “una novela en fragmentos”, “El original de Laura” cuenta la historia de un profesor, Philip Wild, casado con una mujer promiscua llamada Flora, y abre con una escena en una fiesta, “a la que siguen fragmentaciones que muestran la disipación de Wild”, según los responsables de Christie’s.

La preocupación del protagonista “con su propia muerte” lo lleva a un curso de meditación “con el que decide borrarse de la cabeza a los pies”, añaden los expertos de la firma británica, que aseguran que el lenguaje empleado de la obra es “concentrado, con una destilada tensión poética de una potencia intensa”.

“Obviamente el propio sufrimiento que experimentó Nabokov al envejecer influyó el contenido de su obra final. Su propio dolor y el de Wild se asemejan”, añaden sobre un ejemplar que, “con juegos de palabras y salidas ocurrentes, penetra en los pormenores psicológicos del amor y la muerte”.

La novela será publicada este martes en una edición en la que se han incluido copias fotográficas separadas de las tarjetas originales, acompañadas de una transcripción de las mismas, para que el lector las ordene a su gusto.

Dmitri Nabokov ha incluido además una introducción a la última obra de su padre, a la que ha tenido acceso Efe y en la que relata detalles de los últimos meses de vida del autor, numerosos recuerdos familiares, como su salida de Europa y su llegada a América, y sobre todo justifica su decisión de publicar “El original de Laura”.

“Muchas personas creen que, si un artista desea destruir una obra imperfecta o incompleta, así se debería hacer. Pero esos sabios desconocen que Nabokov no deseaba quemar ‘El original de Laura’ fuera como fuera, sino vivir para alcanzar a rellenar las últimas tarjetas con las que completar al menos un borrado”, explica.

Na amerykańskim rynku (ale również w Kanadzie i Wielkiej Brytanii, za kilka dni ukaże się w Niemczech) pojawiło się pierwsze wydanie ostatniej, niedokończonej powieści Vladimira Nabokova, The Origin of Laura. Pisarz nakazał swojej żonie, by w razie jego śmierci spaliła rękopis powieści, tak się jednak nie stało; syn Nabokova, Dimitri, podobnie jak matka sprzeciwił się jego woli i tym sposobem otrzymujemy wielką gratkę dla fanów autora Obrony Łużyna.

Książka nosi podtytył „Dying is fun”. Dlaczego? Bohater powieści, Philip Wild, pisarz i neurolog, stwierdza, że rozpad, umieranie „zapewnia największą ekstazę, jaką zna człowiek” i unicestwia się fragment po fragmencie (rozumiem, że na papierze). Dziwne słowa, jeśli przypomnimy sobie, że Nabokov pracował nad tekstem w szpitalu, ciężko chory na płuca. Gdzie tutaj frajda? Jak pisze Jeanette Winterson, Wild chce, by jego ciało się rozpadło, bo czuje do niego niechęć; to, co było w nim atrakcyjne, zniknęło, podobnie, jak ulatnia się wzbudzający pożądanie urok z ciał dorastających dziewcząt. Powieść bowiem znów dotyka problemu miłości starszego mężczyzny do młodej kobiety, motywu doskonale znanego z Lolity, tym razem jednak starzejące się ciało mężczyzny zdaje się być równie ważne.

Recenzenci roztrząsają, czy opublikowanie tego tekstu było właściwym posunięciem: tekst jest niedopracowany, dziurawy, porzucony; prawdopodobnie odsłoni niedociągnięcia i błędy, rozczaruje fragmentarycznością. Ważniejsze jest chyba jednak to, że w ogóle możemy tę powieść zobaczyć; jak podkreśla Winterson, otrzymujemy ciekawostkę wydawniczą, nie arcydzieło. Owa ciekawostka została wydana w nietypowy sposób: „Dmitri Nabokov, wykonawca literackiego testamentu ojca, daje nam nie tylko transkrypcję ręcznie pisanych notatek swojego ojca (łącznie z błędami gramatycznymi i ortograficznymi), uporządkowanych w sensowny, choć dyskusyjny, porządek, ale również faksymile tych kartek, które, dzięki perforacji, mogą zostać wydarte z książki i ułożone na nowo”.

Może nie jest to wielka proza, jak powiada Winterson, ale warto się z nią zetknąć choćby dla zakończenia książki: “Efface, expunge, erase, delete, rub out, wipe out, obliterate”. Ciekawe czy książka zostanie przełożona na polski, a jeśli tak, to kiedy?

Notkę pisałem w oparciu o omówienia Jeanette Winterson w “The Times“, Davida Gatesa i Michiko Kakutani w  “New York Times” oraz Martina Amisa w “Guardian”.

Quite the what-comes-around game for the Sharks in their 4-3 loss against the Chicago Blackhawks. The Sharks stole a few games from Nashville and St. Louis lately (what goes around), and in this game, they were in position to win, but couldn’t hang on. The lack of defense is starting to rear it’s ugly shark head.

While Sharks defensemen are good offensively, they are mediocre defensively; that goes for defensive defensemen Douglas Murray and Kent Huskins. They are competent, no question, but they are now shut-down quality. It hurts having Rob Blake out, but the Sharks have always lacked a star shut-down defenseman.

I don’t think it’s pertinent to acquire one, but perhaps some of the current players should attend a few hockey camps and learn some defensive fundamentals — specifically not to leave your man! Their eyes are always on the puck looking for a breakout. As much a fan of the couterattack as I am, if  you don’t stay with your man, they’re going to score on you.

They also need to learn how to clear the puck better. The d-men were terrible in the beginning of the season at it, they got better but the problem is starting to come back. There must be some secret way of clearing that can help them. I’m tired of seeing them exert so much effort for no reason.

The Chicago game was back and forth. Very entertaining to watch. Once again the Sharks scored two goals right after another. It took 45 seconds this time, compared with 16 seconds yesterday, to put up two goals. Tonight those two scorers were Jason Demers and Patrick Marleau.

It was Jason’s first career goal and it’s about time. He’s played so well dishing out assists, and he deserves this goal.

The Sharks got on the bad side of a controversial goal call. Joe Thornton batted a puck off the back of Cristobal Huet. He raised his hands him to signal goal, but upon further review, it looked as though the puck dropped and stuck on the goal line. That allowed the Hawks to come back and tie it.

Jason Demers (#60) celebrates his first NHL goal with Dan Boyle (From SJSHARKS.com)

Goalie Evgeni Nabokov’s rebounds haunted him tonight. The Hawks knew he comes out to challenge players a lot, and their game plan of getting shots and burying rebounds work. Hopefully no other team was watching because it worked marvelously. Rebounds left Nabby flailing like Hasek, and of course d-men were not in position to clear out the garbage.

The game ended up going to overtime, but Brent Seabrook ended things very quickly — 41 seconds into the extra session. Seabrook found open ice and received the puck cross-ice. He buried it past Nabby. Nabby tried to do his patented double-pad stack, but it failed miserably. If he would have stayed up and just pushed off his right skate more, it could have been an easy stop because Seabrook’s shot was kind of weak.

The third-period woes continue. The Sharks are not finishing teams; they’re letting them hang around in the third. They once again played well in the second, but I got deja vu seeing this same team get tired in the last period. I won’t put too much emphasis on that from this game because it was the back-end of a back-to-back.

Other Notes

Hit-O-Meter: SJ 17  CHI 21; Patty led the team with three.

Dan Boyle was the goat tonight as he had the worst plus/minus rating (-2). Demers’ +1 was the only positive marker on the team.He added an assist along with his goal.

The Sharks point-streak remains in-tact. It stands out 12 games.

The Sharks travel to Nashville for a rematch with the Predators on Tuesday, just one week after defeating the Preds 4-3 at HP Pavillion.

–Ray

Vladimir Nabokov

In the late fall of 1976, the year before he died, The New York Times Book Review asked Vladimir Nabokov (along with a number of other writers, including John Dean) what he’d been reading lately. He reported that while in a Lausanne hospital that summer, he’d read Dante’s “Inferno,” William H. Howe’s “Butterflies of North America” and “The Original of Laura,” “the not quite finished manuscript of a novel which I had begun writing and reworking before my illness and which was completed in my mind.” In his delirium, he continued, he “kept reading it aloud to a small dream audience in a walled garden. My audience consisted of peacocks, pigeons, my long dead parents, two cypresses, several young nurses crouching around, and a family doctor so old as to be almost invisible. Perhaps because of my stumblings and fits of coughing the story of my poor Laura had less success with my listeners than it will have, I hope, with intelligent reviewers when properly published.” I can take a hint: who’d want to pan Nabokov and end up among the “mediocrities” on his enemies list, to which he might still be adding over on the other side?

But although “The Original of Laura” has, at long last, been properly published — assuming it was proper to publish it at all — there’s not enough of it to be properly reviewed, as Nabokov himself would surely understand. “Not quite finished” with the manuscript? This was a sad under­statement, for public consumption. As his biographer Brian Boyd explains, Nabokov would customarily “envisage a novel in his mind complete from start to finish before writing it down” — on 3-by-5 cards, which allowed him to work on any section he wanted to, then place it “in the sequence he had foreseen, among the stack already written” — and, in the case of “Laura,” “a series of accidents and illnesses would keep him from transferring to his index cards more than a patch or two of his bright mental picture.” The 138 cards we have add up to perhaps 45 printed pages of a novel — of who knows what projected length. The cover of the published book identifies “The Original of Laura” as “A novel in fragments,” as if it were some deliberate experiment in form. In fact, it’s simply fragments of a novel: the first five chapters, some taking up just a few cards, along with drafts and parts of other chapters, a random phrase or sentence here and there, and some notes.

Illustration from “The Original of Laura”

Except for that bit of overselling, “The Original of Laura (Dying Is Fun)” — it’s not clear how seriously Nabokov was considering that parenthetical subtitle — should serve as a model of how to publish a posthumous and unfinished manuscript. (The countermodel is the published version of Hemingway’s “Garden of Eden,” not a serious edition of a great writer’s epic mess, but a market-driven remix, with no information about the extent of the high-handed cutting and splicing.) Dmitri Nabokov, Nabokov’s son and literary executor, has provided not just a transcription of his father’s handwritten notecards (complete with grammatical and spelling errors), arranged in sensible, if debatable, order, but facsimiles of the cards themselves, perforated so they can be detached from the book and reordered by scholars who think they know better, or by general readers with time on their hands.

Necessarily, the younger Nabokov’s introduction addresses the question of whether the manuscript ought to have been published in the first place, since his father had directed that the cards be burned were he to die before actually getting the novel written. Nabokov’s wife, Vera, procrastinated — “due to age, weakness and immeasurable love” — until her own death in 1991; should the son have honored his wish? The playwright Tom Stoppard has said yes, the journalist Ron Rosenbaum has said no (in thunder), but it was really never anybody’s business but the Nabokovs’. “To me,” Nabokov fils writes, “my parents, in a sense, had never died, but lived on, looking over my shoulder in a kind of virtual limbo, available to offer a thought or counsel to assist me with a vital decision,” and he ultimately concluded that “in putative retrospect, Nabo­kov would not have wanted me to become his Person from Porlock.” If that’s good enough for him, it should be good enough for the rest of us; it’s a moot point now, and Nabokovians at least will be grateful that the old man changed his putative mind.

But his son’s analogy is inexact: the never-identified “person on business” who interrupted Coleridge’s opium vision of “Kubla Khan” didn’t destroy the short text we now have; he merely caused the vanishment of the much fuller version supposedly brewing in the poet’s head. Nabokov’s person from Porlock, according to his son’s account, was apparently a “hospital bacillus” — or a nurse who left his window open. A more accurate analogue might be Dickens’s “Mystery of Edwin Drood,” though “Drood” is a far more finished production — Dickens had planned 12 installments and lived to complete the first six — and since he’d been issuing it in serial form as he wrote, his family never had to agonize over its publication. Dickens got far enough with “Drood” to plant ambiguous clues that have enabled generations of readers to speculate, as he meant its original month-by-month audience to do, about how it would have ended. Nabokov liked to make mysteries and plant clues himself — readers of “Lolita” will recall how deftly he hid Clare Quilty in plain sight for most of the novel — and “The Original of Laura” has enough obscure indications to keep his most obsessive admirers arguing about where he was going, though too little conclusive evidence to detain anyone else for long.

In the opening chapters, Philip Wild, a wealthy and grossly fat neurologist, is married to an “extravagantly slender,” unfaithful, much younger gold digger named Flora. She’s said to serve as the model for Laura, the main character in a roman à clef written by one of her lovers, in which “a neurotic and hesitant man of letters . . . destroys his mistress in the act of portraying her.” This novelist-lover, who seems to be the narrator of Nabokov’s novel, may be named Nigel Dalling, or Delling — and may be the “A.N.D.” who, in a fragmentary episode, is told he has a tumor on his prostate. (Or is he the unidentified Eric, who, on the one card in which he’s mentioned, expatiates on his preferred method of achieving orgasm?) Wild, too, is writing a book — “not a work of fiction which one dashes off, you know, to make money,” but “a mad neurologist’s testament” — of which we get extracts in his own voice. He tells of having somehow “hit upon the art of thinking away my body, my being, mind itself.” He achieves this “self-deletion” by putting himself in a trance state, projecting “a mental image of himself upon his inner blackboard,” then mentally erasing it. “To break the trance all you do is to restore in every chalkbright details the simple picture of yourself.”

How did Nabokov plan to connect these two strands of his story — the mistress-destroying lover and the self-annihilating scientist? We’ll never know. Wild’s arcane technique of self-erasure must be connected somehow or other with the novelist’s annihilating his mistress “in the act of portraying her”; the association of depiction with destruction is common to both. But the writer can’t have destroyed her in the literal act of writing, since at one point we see the still-living Flora beginning to read a paperback copy of the novel in which Laura dies. “Let me show you your wonderful death,” says a friend who’s already finished the book. “You’ll scream with laughter. It’s the craziest death in the world.” So does the novel “destroy” Flora in some figurative sense? Perhaps reading it goads her cuckolded husband (who calls it a “maddening masterpiece”) into using his mental eraser on her? We assume that the original of Laura has to die some “crazy” death or other, as her fictive double does, but their creator beat them both to the finish line.

nd here’s a puzzle for hard-core Nabo­kov obsessives. From a free-­standing paragraph headed “End of penult chapter,” we infer that after Wild dies of a heart attack, the novelist-lover gets hold of his “testament” — they seem to have the same typist — and arranges for its publication, though we don’t know how, where or why. Are we to suspect that the lover has invented Wild’s mystic manuscript? And even Wild himself? (Readers of “Pale Fire” still argue over whether Shade invented Kinbote or vice versa.) Yet the lover has already made Wild a character in the “Laura” novel, under the transparent name of “Philidor Sauvage.” Would even a trickster like Nabokov invent a character who invents a character and then invents a pseudonym for him? Nabokovians are welcome to take it from here, as long as I don’t have to go with them. And while they’re at it, who’s the oddly named Ivan Vaughan, who seems to know Flora and who appears in one uncompleted chapter to tell us that “the novel My ‘Laura’ ” was “torn apart by a book reviewer in a leading newspaper”?

Had “The Original of Laura” fully existed anywhere but in Nabokov’s head, it might have been as ingenious as “Transparent Things,” which was narrated from beyond the grave, and it probably would have been more fun than the listless anti-self-portrait “Look at the Harlequins!” But none of the characters here, to the extent we get to know them, inspire much affection, whatever fondness Nabokov might have felt for his “poor Laura.” Philip Wild, with his stinking feet, graphically described digestive problems, grotesque bulk and sentimentally remembered first love — this one is called Aurora Lee, in a deliberate echo of Humbert Humbert’s Annabel Leigh — veers between disgusting and pitiable. Flora seems to have no redeeming features, even for him, beyond her “cup-sized” breasts and “narrow nates of an ambiguous irresistible charm.” Her callous nymphetry and her attempted victimization at the hands — literally — of an aspiring pedophile named Hubert H. Hubert suggest that Nabokov is either (best case) winking at his readers or (worst case) running out of ideas. Even he seems bored by his now-obligatory swipe at “a certain Dr. Freud, a madman.”

The younger Nabokov’s introduction claims that “despite its incompleteness,” “The Original of Laura” is “unprecedented in structure and style.” Brian Boyd recently made a similar claim to The Wall Street Journal: “The opening few words just blew me away. There’s a kind of narrative device that he’s never used before and that I don’t think anybody else has ever used before.” I just can’t see the evidence. The absence of a plot — what we have here is all setup for unknown events to come — indicates that we don’t know what structure Nabokov had in mind. So, in fact, does his son’s implicit invitation to reshuffle the cards. And what’s the unique narrative device in those opening words? “Her husband, she answered, was a writer, too — at least, after a fashion.” Does Boyd mean the device of beginning a novel in medias res, with a character answering a question we don’t get to hear? Virginia Woolf did the same thing in the first sentence of “To the Lighthouse.”

The style of Nabokov’s very last work hardly seems “unprecedented” either, but especially for an aging, ailing man, he was in fine form. This, rather than imputed formal innovations or supposed insights into his writing process — we’ve known for years that he wrote on index cards, and that, like other mortals, he revised and deleted and made notes to himself — makes “The Original of Laura” worth the frustration of reading it. In one passage he slyly melds two of his best-known obsessions: in a miniature chess set, with holes on the board to fix the pieces, “the pin-sized pawns penetrated easily, but the slightly larger noblemen had to be forced in with an ennervating joggle.” In others, he’s still playing with English words as if they were brand-new toys: an abdomen, for instance, is “so flat as to belie the notion of ‘belly.’ ” And not even in “Lolita” did he write a description more visually and verbally inventive, or more simultaneously heartbreaking, than his glance at Wild and Flora’s necessary mode of copulation: “he reclining on cushions, she sitting in the fauteuil of his flesh with her back to him . . . and he holding her in front of him like a child being given a sleighride down a short slope by a kind stranger.” Aside from these small, if genuine, pleasures, “The Original of Laura” probably won’t go over any bigger with real-life readers than it did with that dream audience of peacocks, pigeons and parents. In neither case, of course, would its reception be the author’s fault. I’m willing to believe that the real novel — not the one we now see through a glass darkly — was Nabokov’s last-minute masterwork, but I’m in no hurry to see it face to face.

God, what a weekend. Well, what a Friday night really.

Adoration:

• Hannah Harley Young: you rock

• The police: OK, the Cordy House gang might not love you right now but when you get attacked in Soho the police are pretty much awesome…
• T-mobile: wow – who knew you can retrieve MMS from lost phones…?
• Everyone who sent me kind messages: Zoe, Amy, Sam, Armo, Nils, Matt, Mally, Nuala, Becky, Dee, , Sean, Rich, Matt W, Michael…And thanks to everyone on my speed dial too…x
• Neuhaus: thanks for all the lovely chocolate and champagne

• Lena on Gt Eastern St: without a doubt, the best bar in Hoxton-Hollyoaks

• Ben Osborne: glad you enjoyed Krakatoa!
• Nabokov Theatre company: OK so we did borrow some of your booze but we meant it with love (and will replace)

Disappointment:

• Yellow berocca: who came up with that idea? Vile…
• The torrential rain: it is like being in Noah’s Ark or something…(PS I have no idea what this is an advert for! Bad cat spelling?)

• Vanessa off Gossip Girl: GG is a guilty pleasure for Dan and I but we’re really not loving Vanessa at all. Team Carter -  at least he is properly bad!

This week Happy Birthday Guy Whittaker and Matt/Charli are you still up for drinks…?

PS I lost my blackberry so bear with me if I don’t have your number…

Firgas

“Linked Volume” will be a regular post consisting of a hodge-podge of intriguing links on the Internet. Think of it as a breath of fresh air. A break from all music all-the-time. You’ll find posts to good articles, maybe a link to a slick piece of artwork, or a cool new blog, mixed in with the tunes. A music blog can’t help but touch on many other cultural interests. A curious nature is often the best way to create and find good music. Enjoy. Please feel free to e-mail me with suggestions for links. – David D. Robbins Jr.

• MUSIC: Bluebrain is a band that may not be on the lips of many music fans, but this song should be. Check out the track at the bottom of this post.
• FEATURE: Time Magazine piece “The Meaning and Mythos of Manny Pacquiao” — about the famed Filipino boxer.
• VIDEO: Jill Andrews previews new tracks at Harvey’s Kitchen at monkeywhale.com. Watch her perform her gorgeously soft alt.-country song, “City Noise”.
• LITERATURE: Martin Amis talks Vladmir Nabokov, confronting his posthumous novel and the question of declining genius.
• BLOG: Valparaiso University poetry professor Edward Byrne posts about art’s inadequacy in the face of 9-11.
• MUSIC: Check out this Depeche-Mode-esque sounding track from Tim Williams called “Ozone Street”.
• MUSIC BOOK: Reader Pete K. suggests A Listener’s Life List, a collection of music you need to hear before you die.

Quite the steal-and-run performance by the Sharks in their 3-1 win against the St. Louis Blues. The Sharks were outworked on every part of the ice, but goalie Evgeni Nabokov stole a victory for his team.

I can’t remember the last time the Sharks were this badly outshot (39-17) and still came out with a win. But your goalie has to keep you in games and sometimes steal some. I wouldn’t say Nabby stood on his head though. Despite the huge number of shots, most of them weren’t clear shots at the net. A lot of the times the puck would deflect off someone, and roll around the crease before Nabby covered it.

The game featured a lot of big hits and intensity. Devin Setoguchi plowed two Blues players — Roman Polak in the first and T.J. Oshie in the third. The Blues dished it back in the form of a fight, which was one-sided. Cam Janssen dropped the gloves with Brad Staubitz and Janssen whooped Bitz. No contest at all.

The fight did help spark the Blues as they scored off a bank-shot late in the first.

Unfortunately for the Blues, this game was decided in 16 seconds; that’s all it took for the Sharks to score two goals. They came in the second period; Dany Heatley deked around a Blues defender and beat Chris Mason. Right after that, the Blues turned it over to a waiting Manny Malhotra, who shot the puck off Mason, and Ortmeyer batted in the rebound.

That’s about all the offense the Sharks could muster, except for the empty net goal by Joe Thornton at the very end.

Two of the three goals were on the power play, so that is still hot on the road.

Jamie McGinn tries to skate past Roman Polak (From SJSHARKS.com)

Once again the Sharks’ third period was weak. I wish I had a good explanation for this. Maybe they’re getting tired out there; their best period is the second, so maybe they’re wearing themselves out? I’m not sure. I would love to get in the locker room and ask coach Todd McClellan what’s up with that.

But again, the game belonged to Nabby. This is the front end of a back-to-back, and he’ll probably start again tomorrow against Chicago.

Givin’ You the Blues

Blues owner Dave Checketts ripped the team yesterday for their weak play. That obviously played a huge part in the emotion St. Louis played with tonight. I wonder what Checketts thinks right now about this loss. Gotta be tough, but I concede the Blues deserved this one. But in order to become that elite team, you have to win ugly. Not sure if the Blues have learned that yet.

Other Notes

Hit-O-Meter: SJ 26  STL 18; Patrick Marleau led with four hits, while Seto, Heater and Douglas Murray added three each.

I saw Jamie McGinn on the penalty kill tonight. Can’t say I’ve seen him there before, but it’s good he’s getting rewarded for his hustle. That kid might be Scott Nichol, Jr.

I forgot to mention last game that Torrey Mitchell was reassigned to Worcester for conditioning. Big step for Torrey. Hopefully he gets his legs under him quickly.

The Sharks travel to Chicago tomorrow to take on the Blackhawks. Should be an entertaining match.

–Ray