Nabokov's Signs and symbols

[Smoke Teff]

Bananafish is an incredible story, but I feel like I don't hear non-writers
talking about Salinger's short fiction very often these days. *Nine Stories
*is a great collection up and down. "The Laughing Man" is a great story.
"For Esmé" brilliant. All of them devastating.

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 1:02 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> I feel like Murakami is often overtly allusive to western culture and
> fiction in a way that usually at first offends some of my basic
> sensibilities but that I end up getting over pretty fast.
>
> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 1:00 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Great stuff, Mark.
>>
>> I saw Treisman and Denis Johnson on a panel together a few years ago,
>> each of them laughing about the difficulty, often to the point of total
>> futility, DT finds in trying to change even a word of DJ's fiction.
>>
>> Also if we want to talk about heavy-handed editors in American short
>> fiction, how could we not...
>>
>> I just read this interview Lish did with *The Paris Review *a few years
>> back...
>>
>> https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6423/gordon-lish-
>> the-art-of-editing-no-2-gordon-lish
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 7:56 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Here's inside New Yorker shit I learned; Wm Maxwell did not like The
>>> Lottery, would not have published it.....Ross never committed himself to an
>>> opinion....young Brendan Gill
>>> was the first cheerleader....
>>>
>>> But evidently Maxwell turned the Salinger story into what was
>>> published....took a long part of 1947 and it was held to be published in
>>> January 1948 because Ross wanted the stories
>>> to be as if HAPPENED WHEN PUBLISHED....see The Lottery....(obvious
>>> resort for winter vacation for Bananafish)....
>>>
>>> And Ross complained to Cheever, "Why are all your stories so fucking
>>> gloomy, John?..but i must publish them".....half-off remark since Cheever
>>> was often more 'spiritually" upbeat than many.....certainly that Salinger
>>> story.......
>>>
>>> Nabokov later gave Cheever's *The Country Husband an A+ too...*.only
>>> two so recorded, he gave one of his own NY stories just an A......lots of
>>> lower grades, of course.  and that dog in this story.......does he bound
>>> into the end of Vineland?
>>>
>>> I've never read of Murakami translating Cheever either.....
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 5:37 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Your link to the Cheever had me thinking the same thing. I can't
>>>> recall if Murakami translated Cheever but his short stories have a
>>>> similar rhythm. And one of his famous stories is A Good Day for
>>>> Kangaroos, which goes back to the Salinger.
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 6:21 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > And there is a good Murakami story that I would bet a jar of jelly on
>>>> this influenced. The existential phone calls one.
>>>> >
>>>> > Sent from my iPad
>>>> >
>>>> >> On Apr 23, 2017, at 9:00 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Nabokov's first story published in the New Yorker in 1948 is a tiny
>>>> >> little piece that seems to me very relevant to readers of Pynchon.
>>>> >> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/05/15/symbols-and-signs
>>>> >> He told the fiction editor that “a second (main) story is woven into,
>>>> >> or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent one,” although from
>>>> >> my reading this could be a tease, since there's such a heavy
>>>> >> metafictional layer exploring our tendencies to "project a world"
>>>> >> (COL49) when we're reading. Plus it tied in neatly to the discussion
>>>> >> of weather in books had here recently, and Nabokov might be
>>>> satirising
>>>> >> the idea that climate is a conspiracy based on our mood.
>>>> >> -
>>>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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