Nabokov on the first moon landing New York Times, 1969

>>8014005
>Vladimir "Corncobber" Nabokov
T R A S H
R
A
S
H

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>utilitarianism

>>8014005
>"I dislike Jane Austen, and am prejudiced, in fact against all women writers. They are in another class."
Was this man ever wrong about anything?

I've not read anything by him but he just seems insufferable

>>8014030
what an O.G.

>>8014051

>Arthur Miller
>talks about "social issues," money and economic loss

You know who's behind this, right?

>>8014005
>starting off with basic bitch alliteration
Wow so amazing so good wow

>>8014206
You can't poet, I see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5smPcN8AoE

>>8014206
Need mo afro combs fo dem programs

FORMIDABLE MEDIOCRITY

>>8014030
He really was a pleb.

>>8014005
"palpating" is one of his go to words
Im onto you Vlad

he probably just used it once in Ada but still

>>8014117
>violinist
>>>/mu/

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>>8014267
Nabokov was a sensual guy

>>8014030
probably some reporter was pestering him. guess he was a visual artist foremost

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>>8014071
but dat prose doe.

>>8014293
He seems like a total cock

>>8014301
>writer-writing
Enjoy never reading anything by Hank Moody

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>>8014296

>>8014296
Why is the privileged middle-class white male pleb so ignorant of the plight of all those who are forced to the pavement of this failing societal machine?
Would the noose finally reach you?

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>>8014296
Trump 1948

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the irony of those slamming the Apollo era government for not caring about the poor is that LBJ probably did more to advance a socially progressive agenda than any other US president in history.

>>8014319
Jokes on you I don't even know who that is

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>>8014371

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>>8014368
>There are no limits left
Except those that are too expensive, Mr. economist

Anarchism 2048

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>>8014383
Doggo thread

>>8014005
He's just mad cuz we got there before the Russians.

>>8014459
he hated the soviets

why do you think he left and never came back

>>8014440
12 year old boy BTFO of all these pretentious artists who pretend to be uninterested

>>8014479

Yep.

>Good pay and you find something new everytime you go up.
The most salient point in the thread.

>>8014473
Dude was just a pathetic self hating russkie

>>8014030

I love egocentrics: if the feat is not my own than who cares about it?

>>8014296
Quality post

>>8014440
This and Nabokov's are the only ones worth reading

>>8014030
i hoped some of the greats had written something like this.

>>8014502
He loved Russians

>>8014440
While reading this I wondered why the hell have we never heard of this writer... hadn't looked at the caption...

>>8014030
wow what a fucking cool outsider this guy is

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>>8014030
he was 88 or 89 when he wrote that. I guess at that age you just don't care

>>8014030
Just jelly he's not American

>>8014280
>>8014320
>>8014164
Black people are incredibly narcissistic

>>8014005

but the moon landing was a hoax

...treading on the soil of a film set in florida, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and shame of the event, what if they know... :^)

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>>8014398
>The voyager is always man

what an mcp!

This is interesting, OP. Are you posting it all?

>>8014005
Yea does he always write prose that calls this much attention to itself?

>>8014516
that's actually a nice way to look at things

>>8014293
>light of my life, fire of my loins!!!
I never cared much for that bit. I wonder if people think that's his best or something, because they are always quoting it and shit

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related

>>8015293
they probably haven't read past page 10

>>8015321
Der Spiegel got a little flustered toward the end there.

>>8014080
based

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Full version of Nabokov's answer.

Oh, "impressed" is not the right word! Treading the soil of the moon gives one, I imagine (or rather my projected self imagines), the most remarkable romantic thrill ever experienced in the history of discovery. Of course, I rented a television set to watch every moment of their marvelous adventure. That gentle little minuet that despite their awkward suits the two men danced with such grace to the tune of lunar gravity was a lovely sight. It was also a moment when a flag means to one more than a flag usually does. I am puzzled and pained by the fact that the English weeklies ignored the absolutely overwhelming excitement of the adventure, the strange sensual exhilaration of palpating those precious pebbles, of seeing our marbled globe in the black sky, of feeling along one's spine the shiver and wonder of it. After all, Englishmen should understand that thrill, they who have been the greatest, the purest explorers. Why then drag in such irrelevant matters as wasted dollars and power politics?

I've read my share of Nabokov and the intro to Lolita is easily one of the most memorable things he's written

>>8014440
He's really focused on those huts

>>8014080
That's brilliant

>>8014440

>I'd like to be an astronaut. It sounds like a pretty good job to me. Good pay...

that guy is adorable

>>8015495

indeed

they will have to be specially insulated or something

>>8015401
Thanks I didn't know there was more.

>>8014030
probably knew it was a hoax

>>8014030
I just lost respect for him

A rat done bit my sister Nell
With Whitey on the moon
Her face and arms began to swell
And Whitey's on the moon

I can't pay no doctor bills
But Whitey's on the moon
Ten years from now I'll be paying still
While Whitey's on the moon

You know, the man just upped my rent last night
Cause Whitey's on the moon
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But Whitey's on the moon

I wonder why he's uppin' me?
Cause Whitey's on the moon?
Well i was already given him fifty a week
And now Whitey's on the moon

Taxes takin' my whole damn check
The junkies make me a nervous wreck
The price of food is goin up
And if all that crap wasn't enough
A rat done bit my sister nell
With Whitey on the moon

Moon landing

It’s natural the Boys should whoop it up for
so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure
it would not have occurred to women
to think worth while, made possible only

because we like huddling in gangs and knowing
the exact time: yes, our sex may in fairness
hurrah the deed, although the motives
that primed it were somewhat less than menschlich.

A grand gesture. But what does it period?
What does it osse? We were always adroiter
with objects than lives, and more facile
at courage than kindness: from the moment

the first flint was flaked this landing was merely
a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam’s,
still don’t fit us exactly, modern
only in this – our lack of decorum.

Homer’s heroes were certainly no braver
than our Trio, but more fortunate: Hector
was excused the insult of having
his valor covered by television.

Worth going to see? I can well believe it.
Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert
and was not charmed: give me a watered
lively garden, remote from blatherers

about the New, the von Brauns and their ilk, where
on August mornings I can count the morning
glories, where to die has a meaning,
and no engine can shift my perspective.

Unsmudged, thank God, my Moon still queens the Heavens
as She ebbs and fulls, a Presence to glop at,
Her Old Man, made of grit not protein,
still visits my Austrian several

with His old detachment, and the old warnings
still have power to scare me: Hybris comes to
an ugly finish, Irreverence
is a greater oaf than Superstition.

Our apparatniks will continue making
the usual squalid mess called History:
all we can pray for is that artists,
chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it.

August 1969

– W. H. Auden

>>8016177
see >>8015201

>>8014080
pretty insightful for a rapist

>>8014117
needs a rimshot at the end

>>8014164
i knew the negress would trifle b4 i even started reading

What utilitarian results are there of walking on a barren rock in space? He's trying too hard to sound pretentious.

>>8016481
maybe the prospect of one day traveling to a destination (Mars) that could feasibly provide an alternative to a dying earth? Fucking idiot

>>8016350
unlike two other negores, who were concerned that the moon hoax landing cost too much (and whose point of view eventually won for decades since then), this female negro was just a vapid bad poet trying to get some media coverage

>>8014030
>not writing a paragraph about it specifying you don't care about the utilitarian aspect at the end
lol PLEB

>>8015495
Do you think he was alluding to speciousness of human tribalism in space?

>>8014440
Most adorable thing ever.

>>8016715
I don't know, I thought it was strange he used the term huts though.

Wow, all the jews and the blacks couldn't get over their petty problems for 1 second to enjoy a triumph of the animal Man. How surprising.

>>8016188
A woman named Margaret Hamilton helped with a large portion of the software. Nice try but muh penis gender psychology doesn't work.

>>8016346
Koestler was a rapist?

>>8017688
>A woman named Margaret Hamilton helped with a large portion of the software.
just like ada lovelace, by being a secretary who punched punch-cards?

>>8014030

>States, United. Moon Landing. A triviality. A non-event. Means absolutely nothing to me.

>>8014185
KEK

>>8014479