Pynchon & Nabokov: 2 questions

[Michel Ryckx]

The much discussed P-N connection can be divided into two different 
questions:
1. Has mr. Pynchon been following a prof. Nabokov course?
2. Can we trace some literary influence.

The second question may be answered in the following months.  The first 
one has been answered for by Charles Hollander in his Pynchon Notes 
article on Slow Learner (Charles Hollander, "Pynchon's Politics: The 
Presence of an Absence", in: Pynchon Notes, 26-27, spring-fall 1990, pp. 
5-59.)

[begin of excerpt]

"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."

Because Pynchon uses techniques outlined in Nabokov's courses, and 
collected in his Lectures On Literature (1980), some have assumed that, 
if Pynchon never took any of Nabokov's courses, the two must have known 
each other personally. Actually, they did have one mutual friend, 
Herbert Gold, who offered Pynchon and Fariña access to a New York 
literary connection, James Silberman at Dial magazine. But that was 
months after Nabokov had left Cornell to live abroad. In fact, Gold was 
Nabokov's replacement as writer in residence, so he could not have 
introduced Pynchon: Gold and Nabokov were not at Cornell at the same 
time. According to Andrew Field's VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir 
Nabokov (1986): "The core of the serious Nabokov cult on the campus 
consisted of . . . Richard Fariña . . . and Thomas Pynchon, though 
evidently there was no personal acquaintance between Pynchon and 
Nabokov." 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. [2]

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."

[end of excerpt]

Interesting footnote, by the way:

"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."

continues at
http://www.vheissu.org/art/art_eng_SL_hollander.htm#chap_3

Kind regards,

Michel.