Nabokov in America (52 page)

38
    
“The big overgrown”:
DS, Garnett, 158–59.

39
    
“An extensive … dark bird”:
N.,
Lectures on Russian Literature
, 25.

40
    
“Strands of hop”:
NG
, 87–88.

41
    
“tendrils
faintly stirring”:
DS, Garnett, 159.

42
    
was the focus of a question:
Boyd 1, 194.

43
    
“I ride my balloon-tired”:
D.N., “Close Calls,” 303–4.

44
    
“wonderful thing will happen”:
Ibid., 304.

45
    
“I sit on the lawny grounds”:
Ibid., 304–5.

46
    
“dingy”:
N., “Introduction,”
BS
, xi.

47
    
under old lady:
Ibid.

48
    
looking trim:
SL
, 58. A suit with a red jockey cap might have provoked some amusement among Dmitri’s American schoolmates. Véra, in a letter to friend Elena Levin, also spoke of looking out at the world from that window on Craigie Circle. Houghton.

49
    
he informs Elena:
SL
, 58.

50
    
gone to weeds:
Ibid.

51
    
transformation of Harvard:
Ireland. So transformed was Harvard that by 1944 graduating seniors numbered nineteen, the fewest since 1753. Harvard’s turn toward war research led to the development of the Mark I “Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator,” a protocomputer used for Manhattan Project calculations, and to the development of Harvard’s first cyclotron, crucial aspects of sonar, fiberglass, napalm, chaff (strips of aluminum foil used to dupe enemy radar), blood plasma derivatives, synthesized quinine, antimalarial drugs, and new treatments for burns and shock. Twenty-seven thousand Harvard students, faculty, staff, and alumni served during the war; 697 died.

52
    
“My museum”:
SL
, 58–59.

53
    
fourteen-hour days:
DBDV
, 145; Schiff, 128.

54
    “
already in the blue darkness”: SL
, 59.

55
    
“Funny—to know Russian”:
DBDV
, 72.

56
    
“book is progressing slowly”:
Ibid., 75.

57
    
“I envy so bitterly”:
Ibid., 100.

58
    
“urge to write”:
Schiff, 128n.

59
    
Isaiah Berlin:
Kelly, 51. Berlin’s conversation was with Vera Weizmann, Chaim Weizmann’s wife.

60
    
sixty dollars a month:
Schiff, 129.

61
    
“scene is unpleasant”:
NG
, 2.

62
    
The book develops:
Ibid., 36–37.

63
    
“strange; it is only your”:
NG
, 140.

64
    
“amusing to think”:
DBDV
, 76.

65
    
first scientific papers:
N. had previously published two other entomological papers in America.
NB
, 238–43. In Europe he had also published earlier papers: Remington, 279, 283n9.

66
    
“am taking advantage”:
N. to Comstock, February 20, 1942, Berg.

67
    
English was thereafter:
SO
, 5.

68
    
“A broad cinereous”:
NB
, 254. By sending this article (and other science writings) to Wilson, N. might have overtaxed the professional literary man, who read some of N.’s later literary productions hastily, almost casually, perhaps out of habit. N.’s science writing was often quite charming as well as precise.

69
    
developed a system:
Boyd 2, 67–68.

70
    
his butterfly prose:
SM
, 134, 136.

Chapter Seven

1
    
“married
a genius”:
Boyd 2, 46.

2
    
he set off in October:
Schiff, 123.

3
    
“creepily silent melancholic”:
N., “Russian Professor,” 104.

4
    
“Arrived here, on”:
Ibid.

5
    
“After lunch”:
Ibid., 102.

6
    
or Whitman’s when:
Roper,
Drum
, 37–38.

7
    
“since at the numerous stations”:
N., “Russian Professor,” 100.

8
    
makings of another book:
Ibid., 100, 102–3.

9
    
weirdly foliaged:
This was the Okefenokee Swamp. Boyd 2, 51.

10
    
shows himself as a bumbler, too:
N., “Russian Professor,” 104.

11
    
iconic African Americans:
Ibid., 103. N. memorably sketched Du Bois in a letter to Wilson: “Celebrated Negro scholar and organizer. 70 years old, but looks 50. Dusky face, grizzled goatee, nice wrinkles, big ears,—prodigiously like a White Russian General in mufti played sympathetically by Emil Jannings. Piebald hands. Brilliant talker, with an old-world touch. Tres gentilhomme. Smokes special Turkish cigarettes. Charming and distinguished… . Told me that when he went to England he was listed as ‘Colonel’ on the Channel boat, because his name bore the addition ‘Col.’ on his passport.”
DBDV
, 97.

12
    
racial segregation:
SO
, 48.

13
    
“and the prosperity”:
N., “Russian Professor,” 102.

14
    
“I need not tell you”:
DBDV
, 2; Boyd 2, 644.

15
    
“cost me more trouble”:
SL
, 45.

16
    
“art-speech”:
Lawrence, 13.

17
    
“which belongs”:
Ibid.

18
    
Lawrence’s book cost him:
Classic American
took Lawrence seven years to write, longer than any of his other works except
Women in Love
. The essays changed a great deal over time; at first they were cautious and sober, but in the end they achieved a tone “notoriously flippant, opinionated, disrespectful and informal,” not unlike the tone of
Nikolai Gogol
. Neil Roberts, “Studies in Classic.”

19
    
“There is a new feeling”:
Lawrence, 14.

20
    
Style is what makes meaning:
Lawrence’s two chapters on Melville in
Classic American
contributed substantially to the rediscovery of Melville in the twenties. Delbanco, 24. N. performed a similar unearthing with
Nikolai Gogol
. Lawrence wrote an essay, “À Propos of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” after the 1928 publication of his famous novel; it might have suggested to N. the postscript he wrote, “On a Book Entitled ‘Lolita,”’ in ’56, although the two essays are otherwise quite different.

21
    
gotten his Guggenheim:
Boyd 2, 61. The grant was for the writing of a novel.
Bend Sinister
at this point bore the working title “The Person from Porlock,” that person being the untimely visitor who supposedly interrupted Coleridge while he was transcribing
Kubla Khan
, which had come to him entire in a dream and which, as a result, remained unfinished.

22
    
“near a place which”:
DBDV
, 111.

23
    
“going to tell me”:
Ibid.

24
    
tumbling
canyon:
The canyon, commonly called Little Cottonwood Canyon, is popular among rock climbers. The local cliffs contributed giant blocks of quartz monzonite to the construction of the Salt Lake Temple of the LDS Church. “Little Cottonwood Canyon,”
Wikipedia
,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Cottonwood_Canyon
.

25
    
“a propensity… . butterflies are to me”:
SL
, 58–59.

26
    
“vain, quick-tempered”:
Ibid., 59.

27
    
The waywardness:
Berg.

28
    
“anxious to take a course”:
N. to Jakobson, January 28, 1952, Berg.

29
    
“landlord and the poet”:
DBDV
, 116.

30
    
“Well … read further”:
NG
, 151–52.

31
    
especially keen disregard:
N.’s savaging of other writers is so consistent a feature of his literary discourse that it probably served many purposes, professional as well as psychological. It may be that the Russian literary milieu rejoiced in such vituperation, but other writers of the emigration were more temperate. Speaking of Mark Aldanov, N. wrote, “I am sorry that you discussed my poem with friend Aldanov who for twenty years has been eyeing my literature with a kind of suspicious awe under the impression that my chief business was to demolish brother-writers… . Aldanov regards literature as a sort of enormous Pen Club or Masonic Lodge binding talented and
talentlos
writers alike to a smug contract of mutual good-will … assistance and favorable reviews.”
DBDV
, 137.

N. did not mellow with age. His denunciations became more performative—N. playing himself—but their effect was to define worthwhile writing as excludingly as had the social-reform critics he denounced in
The Gift
. There is a plant of the American Southwest that N. knew well, called creosote bush, that is long-lived and that creates a dead zone around itself, outcompeting all other species by the efficiency of its root system and by producing chemicals that poison them.

32
    
Faulkner he dismissed:
DBDV
, 236–37. “I am appalled by your approach to Faulkner,” he wrote Wilson. “It is incredible that you should take him seriously … that you should be so fascinated by his message (whatever it is) as to condone his artistic mediocrity.”

33
    
“As to Hemingway”:
SO
, 80.

34
    
influenced American film:
Among American movies of the past twenty-five years,
Pulp Fiction
and
No Country for Old Men
, for instance.

35
    
“liked very much Mary’s”:
DBDV
, 117n3.

36
    
read, and lustily hated:
Ibid., 116, 117n4.

37
    
“a he-man”:
Ibid., 116.

38
    
“Twenty years ago”:
Ibid.

39
    
probably McTeague:
Ibid., 117n6.

40
    
marks of desolation:
NG
, 151.

41
    
“delicate sunset was framed”:
NG
, 151.

42
    
known as pugs:
NB
, 12.

43
    
“wrote every day”:
Time
morgue file, Berg.

44
    
with a pen:
DBDV
, 115. “He went to the bathrm, took a cold shower … and tingling with mental eagerness and feeling comfortable and clean in pyjamas and dressing gown, let his fountain pen suck in its fill.”
BS
, 170.

45
    
weather
kept them indoors:
Schiff, 127.

46
    
“a draggle-eared black”:
NG
, 153.

47
    
“I climb easily”:
DBDV
, 115–16.

48
    
Lone Peak the most arduous:
“Lone Peak,” SummitPost.org,
http://www.summitpost.org/lone-peak/151267
.

49
    
“white shorts and sneakers”:
Time
morgue file, Berg.

50
    
“incredibly steep … sheer wall”:
“Lone Peak 11,253’,” Climb-Utah.org,
http://climb-utah.com/WM/lonepeak.htm
.

51
    
“lost his footing”:
Time
morgue file, Berg.

52
    
“footing and began to slide”:
Hall, “Ezra Pound Said.”

53
    
sent a squad car out:
Schiff, 127.

54
    
“trudged and climbed some 600”:
DBDV
, 117.

55
  
“living in wild eagle country”:
Bakh, August 6, 1943;
NB
, 289–90.

56
  
“In the meantime”:
DBDV
, 294–95.

57
  
Unsoeld was hired:
Leamer, 50–51. The next fall, Unsoeld began graduate theology studies at Oberlin.

58
  
well-regarded doctoral thesis:
Roper,
Fatal Mountaineer
, 47. Like Unsoeld, N. read Bergson carefully and held him in esteem.

Chapter Eight

1
  
sharp decompression:
DBDV
, 294.

2
  
“work on the Blues”:
Ibid., 126.

3
  
“milk shakes and banana”:
Bagazh
, 188.

4
  
“poignantly authentic”:
Ibid., 191.

5
  
“Not only their tunes”:
Ibid., 190.