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Lazy Hyperbole Wednesday Thursday
May. 16th, 2019 10:32 amI'm about a million years behind on books I was meaning to read this week, so there is not much to report. I've just barely started A Man of the People and The Luzhin Defense. The latter has this anecdote in the author's introduction:
When I first read Lolita in my wide-eyed youth, I took Nabokov totally at his word about the publisher who wanted to turn Lo and Humbert into a gaunt boy and gruff farmhand on a blanched prairie landscape with splintery barn in the corner; now I'm beginning to suspect he takes off-hand remarks and embroiders them for laughs, or just makes these American publishers out of whole cloth.
Anyway, Luzhin is not a demented violinist, but a friendless boy who becomes obsessed with chess.
There are some other books in the vicinity, but I'll get to them later, I hope.
True, there was a promising flurry in the late thirties when an American publisher showed interest in it, but he turned out to belong to the type of publisher who dreams of becoming a male muse to his author, and our brief conjunction ended abruptly upon his suggesting I replace chess by music and make Luzhin a demented violinist.
When I first read Lolita in my wide-eyed youth, I took Nabokov totally at his word about the publisher who wanted to turn Lo and Humbert into a gaunt boy and gruff farmhand on a blanched prairie landscape with splintery barn in the corner; now I'm beginning to suspect he takes off-hand remarks and embroiders them for laughs, or just makes these American publishers out of whole cloth.
Anyway, Luzhin is not a demented violinist, but a friendless boy who becomes obsessed with chess.
There are some other books in the vicinity, but I'll get to them later, I hope.
