Watching Shakespeare

As much as I enjoy reading Shakespeare, I must confess that I do not really seem to enjoy watching performances of the plays, at least not plays in their continuous entirety. By contrast, for instance, I love what Al Pacino did for Richard III, in putting up scenes of the play interlaced with commentary and discussion. I started the Centry Home Video production of Richard II, and I find myself itching to watch another episode of “Cheers” instead. However, I think I will continue to watch the play, but only taking in a scene or two at a time, as I go on to watch my other shows, for it is not utterly uninteresting to me and it may improve my reading of the play.

Lo (N) "Sheer Pornography"

“I’ve put off reading Lolita for six years, till she’s 18.”

-- Groucho Marx

Sheer pornography is how the editors at Simon & Schuster describe Nabokov's "Lolita" in refusing to publish it. We have a nice essay discussing the controversial publication and the scandal around it. Here is one rejection notice:

It should be, and probably has been, told to a psychoanalyst, and it has been elaborated into a novel which contains some wonderful writing, but it is overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian. To the public, it will be revolting. It will not sell, and it will do immeasurable harm to a growing reputation ... It is a totally perverse performance all around ... I am most disturbed at the thought that the writer has asked that this be published. I can see no possible cause could be served by its publication now. I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.

Here is a note on the suspicions that even befell the author regarding his possible attraction for nymphets:

Nadezhda Mandelstam (writer and wife of Russian poet Osip) told a critic that in her mind “there was no doubt that the man who wrote Lolita could not have done so unless he had in his soul those same disgraceful feelings for little girls”.

And we have this note of a couple of critics, Rabinowitz and Widiss, pushing back against the idea that "Lolita" is just intellectually disguised smut:

Critic Peter Rabinowitz describes a recent debate during which he found himself defending the novel from the charge that it uses a high-art modernist veneer to excuse pornographic pleasures, making it “an elaborate display of smoke and mirrors aimed at tricking intellectuals into defending smut”, an excuse for illicit fantasy as well as a joke on Nabokov’s most devoted readers. Widiss defines the novel as “an endless hall of mirrors” and a “deliberate provocation”; even the afterword, he argues, is a “full-blown literary performance, as complex and convoluted as the novel it accompanies”, and the difficulty of identifying the author’s own position is precisely the point.

For my own part, I am confident that Nabokov is not a pedophile and "Lolita" is not porn. I know I have never wanked one out when reading "Lolita" and I am an easily excitable guy. Yet, I do suspect that Nabokov was playing dangerously with the idea of man's forbidden fruit. A pretty girl does have a certain power over men, even if it is only latent and far-off.

{Source: Tim Groenland at The Dublin Review of Books}

Celebrities and Stuff

The American porn industry is facing shut down once again, after another performer tested positive for HIV this week.

Neither the name nor gender of the performer have been released but the adult-film industry trade group Free Speech Coalition has called for all filming to be suspended following the positive test at a Los Angeles testing centre, the LA Times reports.

If the shut down goes ahead, it would be the third time filming has been stopped this year.

-- ONTD

( Read more... )

Weather

Whoa, the sun has come out so beautifully this afternoon! But it is only a brief respite. The overnight temperatures are expected to sink back down into the wintry thirties, and we are even expecting some drizzle tomorrow. I am feeling a little restless for my walks, but it looks like we have a whole other week of freezing mornings before us.

Coco

Coco remembered. When I came into the office after dinner for my evening blogging rounds, she immediately scurried out of the chair on her own. So, cats have some real intelligence. They do remember things, or else they just really, really hate being sat on.