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Nabokov on the road to Money

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0950236x.2012.638762

1470-1308

Finn Fordham,

Vladimir Nabokov Literary Studies

Abstract While Martin Amis's strong relations to Nabokov have been acknowledged, there is room for a more thorough examination, especially via Amis's early criticism, and also in relation to the shadow of Joyce which flitters through the work of both writers. As a context for the Nabokovian elements in Money, the study moves along the arc of Amis's continuous engagement with Nabokov, beginning with reviews in the 1970s and still surfacing in the responses of 2009 to The Original of Laura. These writings raise issues around actual, symbolic and literary fathers; a resistance to allusive complexity; and, in particular, the idea of 'style as morality'. Nabokov resists the late Joyce of Finnegans Wake while Amis resists the late Nabokov of Ada, or Ardor. Where Nabokov's resistance led to rival worlds of playful and tangled complexity, Amis's resistance marks a limit which is encountered in Money. This brutally and hilariously dramatizes the conflict of the forms of knowledge and power that writers, their characters and readers have over each other. Amis had experienced this conflict in coming to terms with the legacy of Nabokov. Keywords: Martin Amis Money British fiction1980sKingsley AmisVladimir Nabokov Lolita James Joycestyleinfluencemoralitysatire Notes Victoria Alexander, 'Amis Between Bellow and Nabokov', The Antioch Review 52.4, (Autumn 1994), pp. 580–590 (590). Matthew Dessem, 'The Artist Manqué: Nabokovian techniques in Money', available at: http://www.martinamisweb.com/scholarship_files/dessem_money_1997.pdf [accessed 2 July 2010]. Gavin Keulks, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis and the British Novel Since 1950 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), see especially pp. 37–46 (44). James Diedrick, Understanding Martin Amis, 2nd ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004). And, in this context, I am happy to pay my own debts to Joe Brooker's expert critical readings of an earlier draft of this article. Martin Amis, Experience (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000), pp. 9–20. Geoff Dyer, available at: http://unholyhours.blogspot.com/2010/02/geoff-dyer-on-nabokov-groupies-and.html [accessed 2 July 2010]. Brian Stonehill, 'Recent Nabokov Criticism', Contemporary Literature 25.2 (Summer 1984), pp. 235–241 (239). 'Nabokov's 'Grand Slam', The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971–2000 (London: Vintage Books, 2002), p. 489. Ibid. Experience, p. 114. Experience, p. 121n. 'Black Farces', p. 76. War Against Cliché, p. 443. Experience, p. 121n. Spectator (November 1959), pp. 635–636. Diedrick, p. 46. Peter Quennell (ed.), Vladmir Nabokov: A Tribute (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 1980), pp. 73–87. Quoted in Keulks, p. 37. Experience, p. 121n. 'There's something Oedipal in this. In that, my father wrote a piece on the book, attacking it on moral grounds. He made the preposterous claim that there was no distance between Nabokov and Humbert Humbert … I must give my father [my introduction to Lolita] and say, 'Take that!', 'An Interview with Martin Amis', Will Self and Martin Amis, Mississippi Review 21.3: New British Fiction (Spring 1993), pp. 143–169 (160). See http://www.jstor.org/stable/20134585?cookieSet=1 [accessed 5 July 2010]. Experience, p. 121n. 'Nabokov and Literary Greatness', April 1999. See http://www.martinamisweb.com/affinities.shtml [accessed 5 July 2010]. 'Nabokov in Switzerland', The Spectator, 12 May 1973, p. 230, 591. TLS 1121, 2 October 1969. 'Nabokov in Switzerland'. Ibid. The New Statesman, Vol. 89, 21 February 1975, 'Tour de Farce' review of John Hawkes, 'Death, Sleep and the Traveller' et al., p. 250. Quennell, p. 73. War against Cliché, p. 446. War against Cliché, p. 445. Vladmir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), p. 286. 'Black Farces', p. 74. War Against Cliché, p. 250. 'What inhibited Joyce… was a failure of love for the reader'. 'Nabokov and Literary Greatness' (April 1999). See http://www.martinamisweb.com/affinities.shtml [accessed 5 July 2010]. Also 'I am in love with the reader and I want them to love me back'. Available at: http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/lowri-257/martin-amis-talks-to-peter-florence-at-hay-festival-1647 [accessed 9 September 2010]. 'Nabokov in Switzerland', p. 591. Kingsley Amis, quoted in Keulks, p. 41 and see Experience, p. 121n. [Unsigned review] 'Many Voices', TLS, 29 March 1974, p. 346. Brian Boyd, 'Nabokov lives on' (Spring 2010), available at: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/nabokov-lives-on/ [accessed 2 July 2010]. 'Out of Style', review of Vladimir Nabokov's Look at the Harlequins! in The New Statesman, Vol. 89 (25 April 1975), pp. 555–556. Ibid. Ibid, p. 556. Diedrick also presents Nabokovian elements in these novels, though in different terms. See Diedrick, p. 46. 'A?', review of Anthony Burgess's Abba Abba in New Statesman, Vol. 93 (17 June 1977), pp. 821–822. Ibid., p. 822. 'The Problem with Nabokov', available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/14/vladimir-nabokov-books-martin-amis [accessed 2 July 2010]. 'Dark Laughter', New Statesman, Vol. 94 (8 July 1977), p. 55. Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., p. 56. Experience, p. 121n. 'Dark Laughter', p. 56. Vladmir Nabokov, foreword to Despair (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), p. 9. 'Stranger than Fiction', Observer (7 August 1977), p. 28. Andrew Field, Nabokov: His Life in Part, reprinted in War Against Cliché, pp. 245–247. 'Black Farces', p. 76. Ibid., p. 78. Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., p. 81. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., p. 87. Letter to Philip Larkin, quoted in Keulks, p. 37. Reprinted in The War Against Cliché, p. 251. Blake Morrison, 'Into Nastiness', review of Success, TLS (14 April 1978), p. 405. The War Against Cliché, p. 445. Lectures on Literature, p. 122. 'The Problem with Nabokov', see n. 46.