Luna’s Prose Ramblings

Yes, it might raise some eyebrows, but there have always been people that insist that they read Playboy for the articles. And since Nabokov’s 1969 novel Ada was excerpted in Playboy, it gave its literary editor, Amy Grace Loyd, foot in the door.

The original of Laura was long unread, since Vladimir Nabokov stated as a dying wish that his unfinished novella should not be published. After a change of heart, though, his son Dmitri contacted literary agent Wylie to find a suitable purchaser.

Loyd decided to emphasise the long-standing association of Playboy with Nabokov by way of the orchids that appeared in Ada. After Wylie received a notice of no interest from The New Yorker, a publication that also had a strong association with Nabokov in days gone by, he offered the option of first serial to Loyd; “I’m so glad all those orchids did not die in vain. I don’t imagine anybody’s taking good care of them over there.”

Timmy the Tug will sail seas anew. A 40-page long poem written by poet laureate Ted Hughes for his former roommate Jim Downer, with whom he shared a house in the 1950’s, has resurfaced after Hughes’s wife Carol found it and returned it to the original recipient.

The tale tells the story of the strong tugboat that was abandoned by its captain for a cook and a cat and crates of rum. Thames and Hudson will publish the poem as a true replica of the actual work with Downer’s original artwork.

The British Library has released a series of 57 recordings of British and American authors on CD. The recordings include interviews and recitation of own work, some of which has not been heard since the initial recording.

From The Guardian;

Rare recordings of some of the last century’s greatest writers are to be released for the first time – from F Scott Fitzgerald reciting Othello to Tennessee Williams lambasting critics and Raymond Chandler drunkenly slurring his way through an interview with Ian Fleming.

The British Library CDs are a literary goldmine, with recordings of 30 British writers and 27 from the US, most of whom are being heard for the first time since they were in front of the microphone. They include the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf, the sole recording of Arthur Conan Doyle, battily explaining the importance of spiritualism and the existence of telepathy, and Gertrude Stein incomprehensibly explaining how she writes.

‘The Spoken Word: British Writers and American Writers’ by The British Library, price £19.95.