Simon Rowberry

Next year’s SHARP conference in Antwerp (17-21 September 2014) has the central theme of ‘Religions of the Book’. I would be interested in submitting a proposal for a session on ‘New Sites of Worship’ and invite anyone interested in this theme to join this session.

The rise of new social networks and websites both general (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr) and those geared towards reading (e.g. Goodreads, Shelfari, LibraryThing) have led to ‘new sites of worship’ for fandom of literary authors. Users have populated these sites to discuss their favourite authors and books. Occasionally this discourse has become out-of-control and fandom has become fanatical and discussion of the literary turns into worship.

The proposed session will explore the traces of rabid fandom online including but limited to role-play, interaction with authors, obsession and misuses of social media. Please send a short abstract (400 words) to Simon Rowberry (s.rowberry.13@unimail.winchester.ac.uk) by Thursday 28 November if you want to participate in this session.

It is well known that Nabokov projected a persona in his rare public statements and interviews. He used such occasions to stamp his authority on his texts and to preserve the myth of a solitary genius who was not fond of many other authors. It is unsurprising that his correspondence reveals a different, more personable character. Make no mistake, Nabokov-as-public-figure appears in some letters to publishers and authors as he denounces second-rate authors and those who introduce errors into his works!

One of the many examples of this discrepancy can be seen in Nabokov’s mentions of the typewriter in his correspondence and published interviews. Nabokov’s composition method after 1941 relied on index cards and pencils, a method he had transferred from his research into butterflies. When the time came to type up these index cards, he left the typing to his wife, Véra. Although this offers no direct evidence that Vladimir himself could not type, in personal correspondence to James Laughlin, an early American publisher of Nabokov’s novels, in November 1942, Nabokov admitted parenthetically that “I cannot type.” (Selected Letters, 43)

Three years later, however, he included a holograph to a typed letter to Katharine White: “This is the first letter I have typed out myself in my life. Took me 28 minutes but came out beautifully.” (SL, 54) Here we can see an apprentice’s pride and an appreciation of the aesthetic value of typing, especially through the struggle. This moment of glory is in stark contrast to Nabokov’s public pronouncement years later (1963) in a Playboy  interview to Alvin Toffler: “Yes I never learned to type.” (Strong Opinions, 29). Undoubtedly after his initial struggle, he did not take over all his typing duties, but under such a public statement lies a much more complex private engagement with the technology he dismisses.