Blodgett Waxwing and Pale Fire

[Monte Davis]

AFAIK there's no record of Pynchon registered for a Nabokov class (although
anyone could audit or drop in). OTOH, there's an alternate, unattested
avenue:

"[P] was taught for a spell by no less a figure than Vladimir Nabokov, who
was on the staff of The Cornell Writer. The magazine published Pynchon’s
first story “The Small Rain” in March 1959, shortly before he graduated.
The two men were not, however, close, Pynchon later told a friend that
Nabokov’s Russian accent was so thick, he could hardly understand a word he
said. Nabokov, when asked about his famous ex-student, claimed not to
remember him well, though his wife recalled his unusual handwriting, 'half
printing, half script'. "

<goog_161004631>
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/thomas-pynchon-on-911-american-literature-s-greatest-conspiracy-theorist-finally-addresses-his-8830225.html

Contact between a college literary magazine's faculty advisor and a
one-shot contributor? I can imagine none, little, or much. The remark about
N's accent could have come from sitting in on a lecture (other, enrolled
students said the same) as readily as from personal contact.

Re Oedipa and Oedipus: I find connection not through Freud, but through the
plague on Thebes that prompted Oedipus to look back and discover whom he'd
killed. There's Oedipa's initial anomie, a quest that reveals varieties of
midcentury cultural sickness -- and. of course the riddle of the Sphinx to
be answered. More, several of Oedipa's moments of heightened doubt and
revelation are couched in the language of vision and blindness.


On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 4:04 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> The Nabokov class rumour apparently came from Nabokov's wife, but there's
> been a marked lack of evidence to back it up (from what I remember).
> Blodgett Waxwing's specialty is forging documents, however, and the
> Caserne Martiere he escaped from was a prison for (among other things)
> theft and black market stuff, so perhaps it's a nod to the Pale Fire
> narrator/editor's gift for literary grifting.
>
> On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 5:07 PM, Jade Becker <jbecker13 at georgefox.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Noticed on the first line of Nabokov's Pale Fire (the poem part), we've
>> got a mention of "the shadow of the waxwing slain."
>>
>> Do you think this adds any meaning to our friend Blodgett Waxwing's
>> name/role in Gravity's Rainbow? Or is it just for fun? I remember hearing
>> rumors about Pynchon taking a class or two by Nabokov. I haven't finished
>> Pale Fire yet, so perhaps the significance will become apparent.
>>
>> Or perhaps not. Unless there was something I missed about Mucho, Oedipa's
>> name seemed to have little to do with the Complex.
>>
>> Jade-
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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