Lana Del Rey Loves Whitman, Ginsberg and Nabokov...

I heard Lana Del Rey say yesterday whilst she was in Radio One's Live Lounge that her favourite writers are Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and Vladimir Nabokov: these were the first writers for her whose

'words came alive on the page'.

What a girl. (And thanks to whoever phoned in with that question).

Y'all know I love Nabokov (he's featured, in some way, in five of my blog posts to date), but I've not read any Whitman or Ginsberg, and I suspect that maybe they're more a feature of the American canon, than elsewhere? I'm aware of them, sure, but I don't hear them referenced much or talked about. Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' poetry collection sounds fascinating though, as described on Wikipedia and by Miss Del Rey, so that's something to search out I think.

I found this reading of Ginsberg 'Howl' on Youtube and have only listened to the first few minutes so far, but I'm surprised by how much of it I recognise, so maybe I'm more aware of it than I realise.

Have you read any Whitman or Ginsberg (or Nabokov, for that matter), and what did you think?







Songs about Literary Characters







'A Woman should know only how to do 3 Things: Tell the Truth, Ride a Horse, and Sign a Cheque.'

....or so said William Faulkner, according to Javier Marias' delightfully surreal 'Written Lives', which brings together a series of mini biographies of well-known writers, composed out of 'fragmentary and often...bizarre' anecdotal vignettes and tit-bits that 'treat these well-known literary figures as if they were fictional characters, which may well be how all writers, whether famous or obscure, would secretly like to be treated.' Of course, we know this to be absolutely true (in my case anyway - I used to frequently fake name people for the hell of it, and whilst temping, would make up fictional life histories and fake siblings and uncles just to pass the time.) 







Pledge Your Allegiance

     How cool are these?! Love them. Wear your favourite with pride.

[via]







Literature in Art, Part Two: The Cult of Beauty

     After spending the morning at the V&A exhibit that featured in Literature in Art:, Part One, I spent the afternoon at the V&A’s newest exhibit, The Cult of Beauty. This major collection focuses on the Aestheticism that developed in Britain in the latter half of the 19th century, which featured Keats, William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with Oscar Wilde as the poster boy, believing in truth, love and beauty as raison d’etre - in fact, all those lovely, life-affirming things they sing about in Moulin Rouge!. 

     Of course, finding literary inspiration in a movement that contained quite so much actual literature was never going to be hard; especially when it was so coloured by bohemia and decadence, sensuality and romanticism and a deep appreciation of the ephemeral beauty of life. The poetry practically writes itself, doesn’t it? 







Book Quote Friday: Sounds

         For my book quote this week I've chosen a passage from Sounds, a short story by Vladimir Nabokov. He's obviously best known for Lolita and other work like Pnin and Pale Fire, but he wrote a prodigious number of short stories in his time, amongst which are some of the best examples of the form. Sounds was one of his first, and as someone at the very beginning of their much hoped-for writing career, it really interests me to see what other writers were able to achieve at the very beginning of theirs. Suffice to say, I am humbled.