Inside The Scribe(s)

There were two more books completed last week: David Lispky's Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself and The Nabokov/Wilson Letters. The Lipsky piece of DFW disappointed me. It was a well-padded article about an insecure man, very uncomfortable with modest celebrity. It likely wouldn't haven't been published were it not for Mr. Wallace's fate. The most elaborate point of contact between Lipsky and Wallace turns out to be 90s cinema (the interview was conducted in 1996) and I had to admit grimacing over their discussions.I think many of Wallace's confessions about his past have been proven shaky by subsequent accounts. I can't really blame him. Earlier today I walked around the campus of IUS to return some books and enjoy the chilled air. I thought of my good friends Roger and Joel, how the second tier air of the campus has never really left our self-images, that somehow the education was inchoate and perhaps we needed to raise our voices at untoward times to compensate for such.

The Nabokov-Bunny correspondence was conversely a treat. Rich beyond expectation I didn't allow my own differences of strong opinions* with Nabokov to diminish my praise for that wizard. Ultimately I did reflect on my own original contact with The Master (the current Believer also has an article about a woman's discovery of Lolita) via the unlikely source of my friend Steve Powell, who years ago was an intrepid reader. He told me adamantly in 1996 that The Gift was poetry and I would be an idiot not to read it immediately. Thank heavens I heeded such advice.
*- among the many are N's dismissal of Marse Bill with the simple, "Down with Faulkner."