SLSL: Herbert Gold/Nabokov

[calbert at hslboxmaster.com]

MalignD,

This one's for you, bud........



In M&D Pynchon uses the term "superpollicate"...............ya figger 
he is tipping his hat to his old latin teacher or maybe, just maybe....


"......., said Ada, turning her head and, pollice verso..........."

Ada, pg. 39 (VINTAGE)

from the notes by "Vivian Darkenbloom"

"latin, thumbs down"

oh, and btw, that is in the context of a "tea session" - does anyone 
recall the context in which Pynchon uses it in M&D?

love,
cfa

> 
> In a message dated 11/19/02 7:52:38 PM, fqmorris at yahoo.com writes:
> 
> << 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. >>
> 
> I don't have that.  However--
> 
> I have tracked this down.  In an interview with VN in September of
> 1966, Alfred Appel Jr., himself a student of VN's at Cornell in 1954,
> asked Nabokov:
> 
> AA:  What is your opinion of Joyce's parodies?  Do you see any
> difference in the artistic effect of scenes such as the maternity
> hospital and the beach interlude with Gerty Mcdowell?  Are you
> familiar with the work of younger American writers who have been
> influenced by both you and Joyce, such as Thomas Pynchon (a
> Cornellian, Class of '59, who surely was in your course), and do you
> have any opinion on the current ascendancy of the so-called
> parody-novel (John Barth, for instance)?
> 
> VN:  The literary parodies in the Maternal Hospital chapter are on the
> whole jejunish.  Joyce seems to have been hampered by the general
> sterilized tone he chose for that chapter, and this somehow dulled and
> monotonized the inlaid skits.  On the other hand, the frilly novelette
> parodies in the Masturbation scene are highly successful; and the
> sudden bursting of its cliches into the fireworks and tender sky of
> real poetry is a feat of genius.  I am not familiar with the works of
> the two other writers you mention.*
> 
> The response is footnoted.  There Appel writes:  
> 
> *"Mrs. Nabokov, who graded her husband's examination papers, did
> remember Pynchon, but only for his 'unusual' handwriting:  half
> printing, half script."
> 
>