Years ago after I read Don Quixote I read Nabokov’s lectures on the book and while I found them erudite and useful to my understanding of Cervantes’ masterpiece, I was too uptight yet from having finished the tale of the noble knight errant to actually enjoy the lectures. And that is all the Nabokov I have read. Until now. Add another lecture, the one on Ulysses from Lectures on Literature. And this time I fell in love.

Nabokov is no looker, though I suppose in his younger days before the jowls appeared he had a certain attractive intensity. Nonetheless, after reading his lecture on Ulysses I so want to be that girl in the first Indiana Jones movie who sat in the front row of Indy’s class and had “I Love You” written on her eyelids except I’d be in Nabokov’s class though being in Indy’s class wouldn’t be bad either (don’t tell Bookman about this though, he might get jealous). The man, Nabokov that is, had a brilliant mind, a definite opinion, the ability to explain complex things simply, and he was hilarious.

I wish I had taken the book off the shelf before I started reading Ulysses because Nabokov very nicely breaks his lecture up according to the chapters of Joyce’s book. But then reading it all afterwards has worked out just fine too because discussion or mention of other parts of the book necessarily creep in to chapters in which they aren’t a main part but have some import. I read Ulysses with Gifford’s Notes for Joyce always at hand. I am glad I did this but after reading Nabokov, I feel my reading was very small and detail oriented. Dear Vladimir was a lovely antidote to that because he goes big picture in his lecture. He includes details, certainly, but his main concern is how the details he does mention feed into the whole book and he manages to show the wonderful way in which the various elements weave through the book.

Nabokov also has the self-assurance to be able to criticize Joyce. He says things like:

Joyce can turn all sorts of verbal tricks, to puns, transposition of words, verbal echoes, monstrous twinning of verbs, or the imitation of sounds. In these, as in the overweight of local allusions and foreign expressions, a needless obscurity can be produced by details not brought out with sufficient clarity but only suggested for the knowledgeable.

He calls certain parts of the chapter that take place at the newspaper office “corny,” gives permission to skim or completely skip certain parts of chapters, asserts that he can’t abide by Freud or any kind of psychoanalytic reading of the chapter that takes place in the whorehouse, and declares Finnegan’s Wake “one of the greatest failures in literature.” He also made me snort when he tossed out, “every new type of writer evolves a new type of reader; every genius produces a legion of young insomniacs.”

But he also says things like,

You will enjoy the wonderfully artistic pages, one of the greatest passages in all literature, when Bloom brings Molly her breakfast. How beautifully the man writes!

In that you hear the teacher talking to the student but also Nabokov the reader and Nabokov the writer expressing his joy and appreciation.

I could babble on and on and blink my “I love you” eyelids all night but I’ll leave it there. If you ever decide to read Ulysses you have to make Nabokov’s lecture part of the experience. And if you absolutely refuse to read Ulysses, read Nabokov’s lecture so you at least have an idea of what you are missing out on. And now I think you will be spared from any further Monday Ulysses babble. I can’t make any promises though.