34 Comments
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Mystic William's avatar

I grew up in a home without books. We were dirt poor. I had a grade ten English teacher that told me to ignore her class. Every class of hers I was just to read, nothing else. She gave me great books. It was amazing. The first two books I read outside of school were ‘Couples’ by Updike, and ‘Ada’ by Nabokov. ‘Ada’ was the first novel I ever bought. I had no idea books could be so beautiful and challenging. ‘Couples’ was the first book about adults I had read.

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Celia Farber's avatar

What did you think of Ada William? I was just reading out it. I need another lifetime to read. I did read Couples by Updike, it blew me away at the time.

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Mystic William's avatar

A brilliant book. It should be more famous than it is. I have read everything by Nabokov. A few years back I picked up one of his that had been on my bookshelf for decades. Pnin I think. It was strangely dated to me. I don’t think Ada would be.

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Truthbird's avatar

The only work by Nabokov that I've ever read is his translation of Pushkin's novel-in-verse Evgeny Onegin. I was captivated by it. I hadn't expected it to be so lively, engaging, delightful. Nabokov intentionally ignored the rhyming scheme of the Russian original so as to have more freedom in his translation, and wisely so. His translation is immensely more understandable as well as enjoyable to read than the translations by others who tried to force the original's rhyme scheme upon their English translations.

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Howard's avatar

Lucky to have a teacher like that.

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Larry Inn's avatar

Aloha Mystic W.

Many, many people believe reading books increases Ignorance.

Eric Arthur Blair, aka, George Orwell wrote: Ignorance is Strength.

Or, Ignorance is expensive, painful, and blissful pleasure...

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Sonja's avatar

I read Couples before moving to the United States. I found it so depressing. I wondered why people without financial problems would live such unhappy lives.

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Celia Farber's avatar

Actually, yes, it WAS very depressing!

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Mystic William's avatar

I grew up in an alcoholic household. Evictions. Homeless twice for months. In the fifties. Bouts of violence. Etc. Couples depression didn’t seem that way to me. It seemed like ‘wow, civilized people have problems too. Usually about sex!’

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Mystic William's avatar

I was 17 when I read Couples. When it first came out.

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Mystic William's avatar

And 18 when Ada was published. They both rocked my world.

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A.M.'s avatar

Some truly great responses and comments. I recall reading that when Solzhenitsyn talked to Nabokov he found that Nabokov had no interest whatsoever in the Russia question as Solzhenitsyn felt it. My impression was that Nabokov had entirely separated himself from Russia and had no interest in the politics at all.

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Brent Carlson's avatar

Hope you liked your pickle.

The capacity to hear and understand both sides of opposing views is a sign of real intelligence.

Infantile ego and the narcissistic left brain have led to the “woke” cancel culture of today. If someone has a different opinion then he is shouted down and then utterly stamped out by the “woke police”.

The whole world has gone mad and it seems to correlate with the invent of the internet. Everyone knows everything at the touch of a button isn’t a sign of intelligence but of a programed mind.

I am trying to return to my roots though it is difficult. It’s time to feed the chickens. Ciao for now

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Tessa Lena's avatar

Nabokov wrote an absolutely amazing novel, "Invitaion to Decapitation." One of the best works of world literature, hands down! "Lolita," I read in high school and didn't care this way or the other.

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Celia Farber's avatar

Thank you Tessa. I will seek it out!

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Tessa Lena's avatar

it's an amazing book, a great illustration of today in some way

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Howard's avatar

Looks like easy-to-find English title is "Invitation to a Beheading." Thanks for the tip!

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Tessa Lena's avatar

Thank you, Howard! Yeah I read it in Russian

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Francisco's avatar

Invitation to a Beheading is the title I have in English

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Tom Herzog's avatar

Love your writing, Ms Farber. I wish I could say this in a more witty, original way (but I can't so I won't try) it's a breath of fresh air. And that's a lot at least to me.

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Sonja's avatar

Wit is overrated.

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Larry Inn's avatar

www.DrJudithReisman.com/video. or DrJudith Reisman.com.

“Stolen Honor-Stolen Innocence: How America was Betrayed by Lies and Sexual Crimes of a Mad “Scientist.” Judith A, Reisman, Ph.D. Fourth Edition 2013, New Revolution Publishers.

Previous editions were titled, KINSEY: Crimes and Consequences. (First Edition).

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David Shohl's avatar

As a composer, I concur that today’s ‘symphony’ -- discordant and without triumphant finale as it is -- is beautiful, original and refreshing. Thanks again for facilitating it.

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none's avatar

i read nabokov's lolita as a teenager- it made me so furious at the time- i don't think i could stand to read it again- it haunts me- lolita's words about the harm he did to her- from which she could never recover- i don't know what was in this author's mind to create such a work- as i felt that he

lovingly and tenderly depicted what the perp was thinking and feeling about what he was doing to the little girl-the book haunts me still at 71 years old- i wouldn't understand what a pedophile feels without it- and maybe it gives me a better understanding of those who do such things- it brings up much hatred and rage in me mostly

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Celia Farber's avatar

Yes now that you say it I think I agree. I don't think I should take down the post though. I also hated the movie!

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Marta Staszak's avatar

Oh dear, oh dear I read it at 25 and was impressed (horror, horror!) by it.

Was is not a fiction, meant to stimulate and contemplate how diverse our human nature can be? I must be the weirdest little old lady in that I still admire how Nabokov was able to present that particular aspect of of a man's way of being, with nference and consequences to society. That we still talk about it could read as a proof that he did a good job with it although, we have to remember that (whether anticipated or not) the novelty and "scandalous" subject matter brought him him fame on enormous scale. And we still talk about it today, ain't this great?

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Deenzy's avatar

“Most things are impossible to know”

This is the conclusion that any truth seeker who goes down the rabbit hole should come to. After my conspiracy crash course which started in Spring of 2020 it took me about 2 years to realise that the more I learned the less I knew. It’s a humbling experience. I now have an aversion to people that espouse certainty about unknowable things.

I started your audio book yesterday by the way & am several chapters in. I would say I’m loving it but that wouldn’t be an appropriate adjective.... I knew quite a few bits via RFK’s Fauci book but my mind is still blown about the AIDS hoax when I hear the details. How is it that still to this day over 30 years on & having lived through the last 3 years that hardly anyone knows that there is any controversy about the AIDS hypothesis?

What blows my mind the most is that hardly any gay men seem to know anything about it. My wife has lots of male gay friends & they are all completely clueless. 3 of them had the monkey pox jab 🤯 They all naturally lined up for convid jabs & boosters too.

I would have assumed that in the course of 30 years that the truth would have “virally” spread among the gay community, it’s not like the information wasn’t out there. Thinking about this fact is quite depressing as it makes you realise how difficult it is to get the truth out there when you are up against the lie machine of the mainstream media. To the masses the truth only becomes the truth when the psycho controllers say so via their media

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Brek's avatar

Wow, Celia...it took me all day to get to the Lapham's Quarterly piece from 2011. What a gorgeous tribute!

Thank you.

(You had linked to it with this text: "What did Tomas Tranströmer mean by 'the truth barrier?' Answer is here [https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/artist-north].")

Bonus feature for this reader: I couldn't even see the faint font used to tell us this was "by Celia Farber," at the top, so I read the whole thing without realizing who wrote it--till the restatement of "contributor" credit at the end. For me, it was pretty much like going into the exercise without any idea what a reader was really in for (aside from your earlier stated purpose in pointing us to the inspiration for your substack account's name). A real treat in the unfolding!

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Hesperado's avatar

I've been writing fiction for about 3 decades -- all (still) unpublished. A few years ago I decided to write a novel about a bunch of British characters in Imperial India (circa late 19th century, early 1900s). One of them was a pederast who likes boys and sought out local Indian boys from brothels in the poor areas. Rather than depict him as a monster, I thought it would be an interesting literary experiment to depict him as merely a comical upper-class fop, and to add the component that along the way one of the boys he encounters he falls in love with. In the novel, he suffers no retribution nor undergoes any repentance (though he does get killed by Muslims in a battle skirmish in which he saves the life of the young boy in question). Years later, I wrote a second novel about a young girl in 19th century England and her "middle class" family. In that novel, two distinct threads eventually coincide: a bad man of the lower classes has his eye on the girl and eventually stalks her one day when she goes on a long walk through surrounding woods (as she likes to do); meanwhile, the family's mother (a widow) hires a Latin tutor, a youngish man (late 20s) who develops a friendship with the girl wholly innocent with lines firmly drawn. The penultimate moment of the novel occurs when the tutor had gone looking for the girl and coming upon the bad man, knocks him unconscious with a stick, and the challenge from then on was to depict her gratitude in a subtle way, telegraphing her awareness of what almost happened to her, an awareness that must have been largely intuitive, given her age and relative naivete. This awareness reinforces and solidifies her friendship with the tutor, such that in an afterword, when I have her years later already married and with a child of her own, writes a letter to him, she signs off:

"Do write soon and tell me anything of your thoughts, your feelings, your studies to date.

Your friend for all time,

Piper

Paisley Manor

October 1, 1891"

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DAC's avatar

Hahahaha I love the clip of Birds. Even in a telephone booth the birds attacked. Alfred Hitchcock and Black and White TV.

I am starting to believe you is an old fart like myself. Considering Rappaport is like what 86 or 87 I am a child. 66 at this juncture of this body but fuck I was trying to complete the whole thing on this trip but NOOooooooo they are not gonna let me go yet. They are gonna pull it all the way out and make sure I live to a fucking 110 which means I have another 45 years to go.

Jeez. It's hard work BEING in this fucking nut house. Remember the It's a MAD MAD MAD world. Wasn't it a movie where people drove their friggin cars around the world?

Hahaha

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Francisco's avatar

Not so much anymore, but there was a period in my life when I read Vladimir Nabokov's books avidly and obsessively. All except for Ada, which I never could get into.

I find his contempt for Freud totally justified (although Nabokov himself, with that huge ego of his, is not the kind of guy I'd like to hang around with at all)

Anyway, the most edifying and entertaining piece about Freud I've ever read is this one by Jimmie Moglia. Apologies if it has already been mentioned in these comments.

The Fraud of Freud

by Jimmie Moglia for the Saker blog

January 2, 2018

https://thesaker.is/the-fraud-of-freud/

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Cheryl Rose's avatar

Thank you for bringing Tomas Transtromer to my attention. I had never read or even heard of him. I have now. Thanks so much.

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Robert W's avatar

"I am opposed to 'great writing,' (can’t breathe) but not to great story telling." This is such an interesting comment. It is strangely fitting that Updike and Nabokov get paired in the moving and passionate comments attached to this post. These two writers share something. A literary critic I don't love said something clever and true about Updike: he called him a minor writer with a major style; this insight applies to Nabokov too I think. "Great writing" as these two practice it is suffocating, I agree. But great imaginative writing by Melville, Stevens, Moore, Gogol, James, McCarthy--to name a few gaudy examples--doesn't strike me that way. However strange or idiosyncratic, real writers are never just showing off or being clever. I think they often don't quite know what they are doing. The muse must speak sometimes; whoever those people were fades away in their best work.

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andrew adach's avatar

Anyone that enjoys Nabokov should read "Speak Memory", his words come off the page like bubbles off a glass of champagne.

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