WWHD

A wristband I’d like to see: WWHD. What would Hamlet do?

Nabokov’s unfinished

Vladimir Nabokov. The Original of Laura (Dying Is Fun). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. $35.

One sample (transcribed exactly):

Black fans and violet ones, fans like orange sunbursts, painted fans with clubtailed Chinese butterflies oh they were a great hit, and one day Wild came and bought five (five spreading out her own fingers like pleats) for “two aunts and three nieces” who did not really exist, but nevermind, it was an unusual extravagance on his part[.] His shyness suprized and amused FLaura.

I awaited the publication of Nabokov’s final unfinished work with great excitement, but reading The Original of Laura fills me with immense and simple sadness — because Nabokov did not get time enough to finish this work, and because no one will ever know what these fragments would have come to.

There is much twinning in the story these fragments suggest: faithless young Flora (FLaura) is in some sense the original of Laura — as in My Laura, a novel by a man with whom she has had an affair, a writer who now “destroys his mistress in the act of portraying her.” But the original of Laura also has her own originals. Flora’s husband Philip Wild (much older, a neurologist, a lecturer at the University of Ganglia, a man “who had everything save an attractive exterior,” seen buying fans above) sees in Flora his young lost love Aurora Lee. Aurora had a twin brother with whom Philip had one brutal sexual encounter. Flora’s mother’s husband Hubert H. Hubert (his name “no doubt assumed”) sees in Flora his dead daughter Daisy. He also sees in Lanskaya, Flora’s ballerina mother, his dead actress wife. Lanskaya is reborn in My Laura as Maya Umanskaya. Note that in the above passage, Nabokov’s FL turns Flora/Laura into a telephone exchange name: given these shifting identities, I can’t imagine that the pun is unintended. Lolita, Poe’s Annabel Lee, and Petrarch’s Laura are of course originals of Flora as well. And Otto Preminger’s 1944 film Laura hovers somewhere in the background. In that story, the relationship between original and copy is oddly reversed, as a painting of Laura Hunt becomes the original of Laura, the image with which detective Mark McPherson first falls in love.

Most curious and poignant in these fragments is the figure of Philip Wild, a man who despises his body — stomach, legs, feet — and who is engaged in a practice of self-hypnosis or trance whose goal is the obliteration of that body, part by part. Thus the novel’s subtitle, Dying Is Fun: “the process of dying by auto-dissolution,” Wild writes, “afforded the greatest ecstasy known to man.” As Flora’s lover destroys his mistress, Wild destroys himself. And here’s more twinning: Wild visualizes his body as a pronoun, an I, the letter prominent in his name. Like his creator, he is working on a book. Like his creator, he writes with a pencil. But unlike his creator, he finishes before dying. What becomes of Wild’s manuscript, taken from his typist by “that other fellow,” who wants to give it “a place of publication more permanent” than a little magazine, is a mystery whose answer we’ll never have. (My suspicion: the other fellow is Nabokov, incorporating Wild’s manuscript in his own.)

The Original of Laura is beautifully designed by Chip Kidd (yes, that’s a real name), with reproductions on heavy stock of the 138 index cards that hold the text, itself transcribed, card by card, with what appears to be absolute accuracy. Penguin (the book’s UK publisher) has online reproductions of several cards.

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Vladimir Nabokov’s index cards

Objectified

Tonight the PBS series Independent Lens shows Objectified, Gary Hustwit’s 2009 film about objects and design. If Objectified is anything like Helvetica (2007), it’ll be terrific.

If you visit the Independent Lens site for the film, be sure to take the quiz, "Which Object Are You?" I’m a Vespa scooter. You?

Objectified (the film’s site)
Objectified (at Independent Lens)
Helvetica (the film’s site)

A related post
Helvetica

November 31

I’ve updated an earlier post by adding an explanation from Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners: November gone rogue.

Domestic comedy

“They’re finally fixing the clock.”

“It’s about time.”

[Silence.]

“You’re not going to say anything about that remark?”

“I’m trying not to acknowledge it.”

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts

Mozy double referral bonus

The online backup service Mozy is offering new users of MozyHome Free (2 GB free backup) an extra 512 MB when registering with a referral code from a current user. The current user gets an extra 512 MB too. (The usual referral bonus is 256 MB.) This Mozy offer expires on January 10, 2010.

I like Mozy, a lot. If you’d like a referral code, reader, please e-mail me. The address is in the sidebar, below the photograph.

[If you’re reading this post in a reader, reader, come by and visit.]

Morris Reisman

Morris Reisman, inventor of the Silk Away Corn-on-the-Cob Brush and other kitchen items, has died at the age of seventy-six. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has an obituary.

In August 2005, I wrote to Mr. Reisman about a confusion between its and it’s in the text on his corn-brush package. In March 2007, I received a surprising and wonderful reply.

[Thank you, Linda, for your e-mail.]

November gone rogue

The Field Notes Brand 2009 Calendar doesn’t really add an extra shopping day before Christmas: December 1 falls on the same Tuesday as “November 31.”

This calendar is such a beautiful thing that I don’t mind the mistake. Or is it a joke? I can’t tell.

Field Notes 2010 calendars are coming on November 25.

[Update: I e-mailed Coudal Partners about November 31, and Jim Coudal replied. He suggests that we think of November 31 as a “bonus day”: “We’re aware of it and our policy is that people should just relax and do no work on that day!”]

A related post
Economies of time (Hi and Lois)

[My only connection to Field Notes Brand is that of a happy user.]

Shopping with Robert Frost

A 15 oz. can of Café du Monde coffee and chicory at our favorite Asian market: $5.25. The same can at a fancy “mart” a mile away: $12.55.

In the words of the poet (well, not really), “Compare, compare!”

Would Robert Frost have liked this coffee? “Earth’s the right place for Café du Monde”: I can hear almost hear him saying it. No, never mind; he’s signed up with Folger’s.

Café du Monde is great for making Vietnamese coffee.

[No poems were harmed in the making of this post.]

How to improve writing (no. 25)

From a book on design, a sentence about the look of a royal spouse’s “consort throne”:

It was gilded to look as if it were made of gold, the metal that is still the universal signifier of durability and status in almost every culture.

One way to improve this sentence: trust the reader to know what gilded means.

A second: clear up the inconsistency of “universal” and “almost every.”

A third: find a precise alternative to durability. That word might be associated with, say, long-wearing fabrics. But gold doesn’t resist wear; it doesn’t wear.

A fourth: rethink status. Yes, status does mean “high rank,” but I’d rather see the word with a modifier, for the same reason that I’m opposed to “quality” education.

A better sentence:

It was gilded, as gold still signifies high status and abiding value in almost every culture.

I’ve omitted the names of writer and book: neither should be judged by a single sentence. But many sentences in this book are in need of revision: cuts, breaks, rearrangement of parts, and plain old correction (of subject-verb disagreement, for instance). It makes sense that there is no note of thanks to an editor. W.W. Norton & Company, you’re slipping.

The moral of the story: Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. And many more are to be borrowed from the library. Try before you buy.

[This post is no. 25 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. With apologies to Francis Bacon.]

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All How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)