List: Things Nabokov 'Loathed'

This post is just for "fun", while I make final adjustments to my next review. (By "fun", I mean highbrow "fun".)

A few days ago, I was lucky enough to catch a documentary on Vladimir Nabokov called How Do You Solve A Problem Like Lolita? (At the time of writing, it's still available on BBC iPlayer — allegedly until 24th December.) Its focus is on whether his most notorious work is a 'morality tale' or the 'fantasies of a dirty old man'. Presented by Stephen Smith, an able and likeable arts journalist, it visits some of the places where Nabokov lived and worked and provides a nice introduction to some of his writing, all the while keeping its central question in mind — but also, more importantly, in check. The question is, of course, one that has been answered by many critics before and is answered again in this documentary but, as Smith explains, the public perception of Lolita is still that it is somehow a 'pervy book'.

But never mind all that. D. G. Myers has written a far better appraisal of the book than I could ever hope to. The documentary begins with clips of Nabokov apparently giving a long list of things he loathes — among them 'vulgar movies' and 'such things as jazz'. I wondered if there was a definitive list anywhere and, when I couldn't find one online, I took it upon myself to try and put one together.

All the things listed below I got through doing a Google search, first for the exact phrase 'Nabokov loathed' and then, as there is a tendency among critics to speak about even dead authors in the present tense, 'Nabokov loathes'. I then loosened up my search to pick up any odds and ends that 'he loathed', or merely 'hated' or 'abhorred'. I tried to read the search results carefully to make sure I understood the context of what was being said, but please understand this isn't a definitive list of things Nabokov loathed — merely of what people claim Nabokov loathed. You can see where the claims came from by clicking the numbers after each word or phrase.

• abridged dictionaries [1]
• allegory [2] [3] [4]
• any sort of group [1]
• approaching/fixing an oeuvre in a "personal and historical context" [5]
• bidets [6]
• bloodshed [7]
• books that [exist] to give moral lessons about issues like redemption [8]
• bullfighting [6]
• canned music [6]
• Chernyshevsky [9]
• crime [1]
• critics [10]
• cruelty [1] [11]
• detective stories [12]
• dictatorships [1]
• Dostoyevsky [6] [33]
• Freud [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
• Freudians [1]
• group activity [7]
• hooligans [6]
• Humbert Humbert [20] [21] [22]
• insecticides [6]
• jazz [6]
• Kinbote [22]
• literary pretenders [23]
• Marxism [25] [26]
• Marxist class consciousness [27]
• mechanistic principles in art [23]
• nightclubs [6]
• oppression [1]
• Plato [24]
• polemics [27]
• popular pulp [28]
• poshlost ["a kind of smug or pseudo-genteel vulgarity"] [29]
• primitive masks [6]
• satire [especially "social satire"] [38] [39] [40] [41]
• science fiction with its gals and goons, suspense and suspensories [1]
• soft music [1]
• stupidity [1]
• swimming pools [6]
• symbolism [30]
• symbols [31]
• teaching [32]
• the circus [6]
• the kind of petty-mindedness that [leads] to war and historical crisis [15]
• the novelist of ideas [33]
• the roar of motorbikes [6]
• the slightest hint of any "social" conception of literature [34]
• the very nature of totalitarian states [7]
• Thomas Mann [35]
• transistor radios [6]
• novels that are "transparent philosophical tracts" (for example, the novels of Ayn Rand) [25] [26]
• trucks [6]
• Van Veen [36]
• war [7]
• writing of the seventeenth century "known for the purity, simplicity, and loftiness of [its] style" [37]
• yachts [6]

Hopefully, I don't really need to say that this shouldn't be taken as some kind of critical reading of Nabokov. When I did this search, I was merely interested in public perceptions of Nabokov; I don't seek to question or challenge those perceptions as Smith did with Lolita. Nabokov himself, however, did claim to loathe many of the items listed (many websites cited Nabokov's Strong Opinions). Given the nature of my search and the number of claims made, this list probably isn't exhaustive — exhausting perhaps though, and it is a start.


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WEBSITES CHECKED (All accessed 18-December-2009)

[1] http://www.jstor.org/pss/1345030
[2] http://camqtly.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/35/4/301
[3] http://morogroves.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-love-and-lolita.html
[4] http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20193931
[5] http://www.amazon.com/Vn-Life-Art-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0356142345
[6] http://www.ralphmag.org/EC/briefs.html
[7] http://www.icelebz.com/quotes/vladimir_nabokov/
[8] http://www.searchmiss.info/question/20061126225612AAAOmY0.html
[9] http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=69-bE3SDf_YC&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=nabokov+loathes&source=bl&ots=XY3_owpnPB&sig=fZMOIgp6IpO9nxHZU234fJRlA0M&hl=en&ei=0vMrS4HEL8ul4QbE-YWaCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAsQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[10] http://www.ralphmag.org/CB/madness-art.html
[11] http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/coutnab2.htm
[12] http://www.lauralippman.com/nov05.html
[13] http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/vncrit9.htm
[14] http://www.slate.com/id/2000072/entry/1002659/
[15] http://www.jewcy.com/daily_shvitz/nabokovs_satire
[16] http://www.jchallman.com/assets/pdfs/toward_a_fusion.pdf
[17] http://www.pgw.com/catalog/catalog.asp?DBKey=318&CatalogKey=549172&Action=View&Index=Page&Book=2042800&Order=190
[18] http://www.bookandreader.com/forums/f5/vladimir-nabokov-lolita-9072-7.html
[19] http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/04.26.01/luzhindefense-0117.html
[20] http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003620.php
[21] http://mb.sparknotes.com/mb.epl?b=492&m=434001&f=1&p=4&t=160600
[22] http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1319
[23] http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/03/157.shtml
[24] http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0806&L=nabokv-l&P=R49853
[25] http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2005/12/22/nabokov/index.html
[26] http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/09/what_do_ayn_rand_and_kevin_tru.php
[27] http://morogroves.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-love-and-lolita.html
[28] http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1476
[29] http://www.chilit.org/GRENBLT3.HTM
[30] http://mb.sparknotes.com/mb.epl?b=492&m=354418&f=1&p=4&t=132596
[31] http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20193931
[32] http://forums.escapefromelba.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=112.0
[33] http://rodneywelch.blogspot.com/2006/10/dostoevsky-and-me-arent-just-like-that.html
[34] http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zTqElvqLR64C&pg=RA1-PA7&lpg=RA1-PA7&dq=%22nabokov+loathed%22&source=bl&ots=Bx8eZ-EHUF&sig=nhVqbJujsQaSRGwM8HY688YV7lA&hl=en&ei=L-srS-S6KdWq4QbyoqCZCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCwQ6AEwCTgK#v=onepage&q=%22nabokov%20loathed%22&f=false
[35] http://www.littlearmenia.com/html/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=482
[36] http://glennkenny.premiere.com/blog/2007/11/say-hello-to-th.html
[37] http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/hamrit.htm
[38] http://mural.uv.es/jovrope/project.htm
[39] http://luna.typepad.com/weblog/2008/03/all-of-nabokovs.html
[40] http://www.dactyl.org/amis.html
[41] http://www.aetern.us/lista-55.html