SLSL: Herbert Gold/Nabokov

[Otto]

David Morris:

> All of the web site text below is unsourced and is thus unreliable, no
> matter how often it is repeated in various forms.  The internet is rife
> with cutting and pasting from one source to another, and sometimes
> "facts" have a way of growing roots from thin air.

Right, rumours are like tendrils, especially on the web. But not all is
unsourced:

> Literati Scatterati Diversa Influentia e Corrupta
> "The MLA Bibliography lists citations for studies addressing Pynchon and
> his sources in such authors, personalities, and genres as: (...)."
> http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/bio/influences.html

This is pretty well done. The MLA is a good way to start at the library.

>
> Cornell is my alma mater, and I'm sure my but has sat in some chair or on
> some wall where Pynchon's did.  I never knew until this list that Nabakov
> taught there, which also makes me happy.  But the facts re. Pynchon's
> residence there and Nabakov's too, not to mention Pynchon's course
> record, should be possible, by hook or crook, to acquire.
> Until something resembling that is sourced in these reports I remain an
> agnostic.
>
> David Morris
>

Me too. There are at least two very contradicting assertions:

1."Pynchon recalls that Nabakov has such a heavy Russin accent that it was
difficult to understand anything he said."
     (Fringeware bio)
2. Naumann: "P. told me once that he couldn't remember that he studied at
Nabokov."
    (Tobias Rapp in the TAZ about the radio event)
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0105&msg=55708
-- interesting post by KWP translating something in German posted by Richard
Romeo. The TAZ-text isn't on the web anymore, only here:
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0105&msg=55697

"Was there a direct, personal relationship between twenty-year-old Pynchon
and fifty-seven-year-old Nabokov? Probably not. While it has become
axiomatic among some scholars to say Nabokov was Pynchon's comparative
literature, checking a bootlegged copy of Pynchon's transcript (albeit one
that may have been tampered with) against the course listings for the years
in question yields no evidence Pynchon ever enrolled in any of Nabokov's
courses for credit. Pynchon enrolled in neither Literature 311-312, "Masters
of European Fiction," nor Literature 325-326, "Russian Literature in
Translation." Of course, Pynchon might have audited Nabokov, off the record.
Indeed, a member of Pynchon's undergraduate cohort, Robert H. Eisenman (B.
A. Cornell, 1958), now Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Cal
State Long Beach, said in a recent telephone interview: "Everybody who was
anybody audited the legendary Nabokov lectures, to hear the showman on Emma,
Anna, and Gregor Samsa. It was a very large lecture hall with no attendance
monitors, so auditors caught individual lectures as they pleased. Pynchon
would have known that."
(...)
Furthermore, in more than thirty years, no photo, letter or magazine article
by any third party giving an eyewitness account of a meeting between Nabokov
and Pynchon at a class, reading, department function, or purely social
gathering has surfaced. Since such remembrances of celebrities past would be
just the thing for the Cornell Alumni News, for example, I assume none
exist.
(...)
Yet Nabokov was an enormous presence around Ithaca, what with the Paris
edition of Lolita (1955) raising such a ruckus in those years, even to the
extent, Field tells us, that the Cornell Book and Bowl Society read it
aloud, with Fariña one of the narrators. Nabokov was such a presence that
Pynchon could hardly have avoided his influence."
http://www.vheissu.be/art/art_eng_SL_hollander.htm

In a footnote Hollander says:
"For dispelling the notion that Pynchon studied with Nabokov, I am indebted
to Steve Tomaske, literary sleuth, who first called the nearly complete lack
of hard evidence to my attention. Pynchon's apprenticeship seems to have
been "established" by an offhand comment in a 1966 interview. Did Nabokov
remember Pynchon from among his hundreds of students? No. But Madame
Nabokov, who graded the Professor's papers, remembered someone, perhaps
Pynchon who had unusual handwriting. (Pynchon is said to blockletter
personal notes, as do legions of the cohort who were taught handwriting in
that period.) This unverified "perhaps" became the axiom on which the legend
has flourished."

On Naumann:
"Michael Naumann wurde 1941 in Koethen/Sachsen-Anhalt geboren. Er studierte
Politik, Geschichte und Philosophie in Marburg und München. Als Journalist
arbeitete er für DIE ZEIT und den "Spiegel". 1985 übernahm er die
Verlagsleitung des Rowohlt Verlags. 1995 ging er nach New York, um dort
zunächst den Verlag Metropolitan Books und dann Henry Holt zu leiten. Im
Oktober 1998 berief ihn Gerhard Schröder als Staatsminister für Kultur. Im
Januar 2001 wechselte Michael Naumann als Herausgeber und Chefredakteur zur
ZEIT."
http://www.zeit.de/buecher/buchmesse//autoren/naumann.html

It remains a rumour until Pynchon himself says yes or no. I agree to Rob
that it isn't inconceivable and I'm not anxious about the Nabokov-link, but
Naumann has said quite definitely no. Why should he have made that up? He
wasn't recalling any sources but was speaking about his personal talks with
Pynchon. The following article says that Naumann prefers to "exchange
stories from man to man at the bar." This has been my impression from the
radio-show too.

"Warum geht ein von Freund und Feind als hoch gebildet geschätzter Mensch,
der zornige Briefe schreibt, wenn ein Rezensent nicht begreifen will, daß
sein Autor Thomas Pynchon das Erbe von Thomas Mann, John Steinbeck, Robert
Musil und James Joyce zugleich angetreten hat, in die Politik? Was treibt
ihn zu den Genossen, wo er doch viel lieber an der Bar Geschichten von Mann
zu Mann austauscht?"
http://kultur-netz.de/archiv/leute/naumann.htm

Otto

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