Pyn.Nab and a query

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

One thread of this Nab/Pyn question runs:

>Ron,
>Nabokov, while beginning his literary in exile 
>in Germany, utilized the nomme de plume of Vladimir Sirin.
>"Sirin" is the Russian word for "siren" and refers to a type of bird;
>it was also the name of an important publishing house, particularly
>for RUssian Symbolists.
>I would like to echo your request for any thoughts and/or references
>people have regarding the relationships between the two figures.
>
>I am currently toying with idea of including TLP on my dissertation,
>which addresses the relationship between memory, nonlinear narrative,
>and the creation of fictional worlds--I am writing on Robbe-Grillet,
>Nabokov, and possibly Pynchon, but have not decided.
>It might be nice to know what some of you think, given
>that my knowledge of RG and VN is much greater than that regarding TLP.
>Thanks in advance--hope this spawns a good thread.
>Thanks, Ron.
>
>Cary




Following this thread of Pynchon/Nabokov makes my palms sweat.  I've just 
finished teaching PALE FIRE and again I feel the eeriest pynchonian presence 
everytime I read a Nobokov novel.  I made some notes, which I don't have w/ 
me, natch marking some specific images in PF which it felt absolutely clear 
resurface in TRP's work, mostly CL49, but not only there.  Back when, for my 
diss., I hit upon an article by Susan Strehle in which she coins a 
term--Actualism--(I think it's her coinage) and applies it to Nabokov.  She 
uses it to help analyze how Nabokov, well, *actualizes* his fictional 
realities.  I find the term, w/ some stretching, can be applied to TRP to 
describe the way Pynchon uses linguistic structures. or the features of words 
generally,  to dramatically--embody?--Actualize?--make immanent?--his 
thematic concerns.  

One obvious commonality is their use of paranoia (hysterically funny in PALE 
FIRE); another might be their attempts to use form to attack time (at least 
we see this in V., w/ Stencil's history-making, and in GR, which--IMO--takes 
place in notime; in Nabokov this idea is all over LOLITA, PALE FIRE, and ADA.  
I'm groping here towards some sense that in each writer time is an adversary 
to be taken on through the weaponry of space (see, Joseph Frank,is it?  
Spatial Form in Modern Literature).

These inchoate thoughts of mine mask an absolutely certain intuition that TRP 
is paying, in lots of sly ways, homage to Nabokov, a writer he must have had 
ample time to contemplate during those long lectures he attended.  

In this regard, if you read the LA WEEKLY story on the Wanda Tinasky/TRP 
letters, author Dave Gardetta recounts the well known anecdote about Nabokov 
being questioned about Pynchon's having attended N.'s Cornell class in Modern 
Literature, and Nabokov's well-known claim to have absolutely no memory of 
TRP.  Gardetta tells the anecdote as a way of illustrating a 
weird--amnesia--which comes over people once they've had contact w/ Pynchon, 
and implies it's a deliberate sort of amnesia.  Gardetta leaves out the 
second half of the anecdote in which Vera, Nab.'s wife, says she absolutely 
remembers Pynchon;'s (get this) handwriting, which she describes as a curious 
mixture of block printing and cursive (a description which jives w/ those of 
others who've seen the master's hand).  I think I first read this anecdote in 
an article by Matthew Winston titled--The Quest for Pynchon--but I don't 
remember the ultimate source, that is, who actually went and visited Nab. and 
Vera and got those answers from them.  Does anybody out there know?


john m