News
From the Department of English
For Immediate Release
- November 5th, 2009 Cornell celebrates Nabokov book release with lecture
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On November 17, 2009, Vladimir Nabokov’s much discussed, unfinished novel The Original of Laura will finally be published by Knopf. Although Nabokov had instructed his wife, Vera, to destroy the draft—which was handwritten on 138 index cards—she did not. The cards were instead locked in a Swiss bank vault for thirty years. Dmitri Nabokov, Vladimir’s son and only surviving heir, is now allowing the world to read this last work.
This is an important chapter in the ongoing narrative concerning Cornell writers, as Vladimir Nabokov spent many years at Cornell, teaching, lecturing, and writing. Serendipitously, this book is appearing near the end of the centennial celebration year for Creative Writing at Cornell, during which The Creative Writing Program has been highlighting famous and lesser-known writers who have studied or taught here.
In celebration of this release, the Department of English has invited Professor Brian Boyd, a leading Nabokov scholar and biographer, to present the Wendy Rosenthal Gellman Lecture on Thursday, November 19, 2009, in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, at 4:30 p.m. Boyd, who hails from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, will explore questions surrounding the decision to publish this work, despite Nabokov’s wishes, and discuss what we can make of this novel, over thirty years later, in his lecture entitled “Nabokov’s Literary Legacy.” A reception following the lecture will be held in the “Pale Fire Lounge,” which memorializes Nabokov’s career at Cornell.
The next day, Friday, November 20, also at 4:30 and in Hollis Auditorium, Professor Boyd will deliver a second lecture, “On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, Art and Fiction.” Having written many evolutionary articles on writers from Shakespeare and Austen to Dr. Seuss, Brian Boyd has recently published, through Harvard University Press, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. In his lecture, he proposes to discuss the connections between evolutionary perspectives on human life and our compulsion for art and narrative.
The Gellman Lecture is an annual event that brings distinguished scholars of modern literature, at the invitation of the English Department, to speak at Cornell about their field of specialty. The Lecture series was established by a generous gift from Wendy Rosenthal Gellman '81, who majored in English while at Cornell and would like to express her appreciation of the English Department faculty for instilling in her a lifelong love of learning and literature. The events this year are co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the Society for the Humanities.
Cornell Store staff will be present at these lectures with copies of both the Nabokov and the Boyd books for sale. In addition, on the first floor of Olin Library, some of the Nabokov items in the Cornell collections will be on display in a case as you head right upon entering the front doors.