Eric Naiman
Biographic Data
| ID | 698952 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eric Naiman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eric |
| FAMILY NAME | Naiman |
| SIGNATURE | NAIMAN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0009-0001-4782-0888 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
“There was something almost crude about it all…” – reading Crime and Punishment ’s epilogue hard against the grain
This article employs a strategy of “adversarial reading,” seeking to find complexity and contradiction in the seemingly monologic epilogue to Crime and Punishment. Since the novel’s most resistant and perverse interpreters, and in particular Svidrigailov, have vanished from the text prior to the opening of the epilogue, it is the reader’s challenge to carry forward these characters’ approach to textual interpretation and keep alive the novel’s re…
Sex in Public
Nabokov, Perversely
In an original and provocative reading of Vladimir Nabokov's work and the pleasures and perils to which its readers are subjected, Eric Naiman explores the significance and consequences of Nabokov's insistence on bringing the issue of art's essential perversity to the fore. Nabokov's fiction is notorious for the interpretive panic it occasions in its readers, the sense that no matter how hard he or she tries, the reader has not gotten Nabokov "ri…
Kalganov
When Nabokov Writes Badly
This article explores the role of bad writing in Nabokov's work, examining in particular the tension between morality and aesthetics in Laughter in the Dark , a novel that Nabokov made more aesthetically spare in his rendition of its Russian forerunner ( Kamera obscura ) into English. The novel should be read as a polemic with Tolstoy's manifesto on “good,” “bad,” “fake” and “perverted” art, Chto takoe iskusstvo ? Although several scholars have a…
Afterword
Platonov studies continue to revolve around questions of resistance. Each article in this special section begins by articulating the parameters of a paradigm and then shows how Andrei Platonov distorts or subverts the model in significant ways. The author otDzhan remains an unruly figure, impatient with the stereotypes that nonetheless fuel his work, if only primarily through opposition. Once, the question was how to determine Platonov's attitude…
The Most Secret Quintessence of Life
Hermophobia (On Sexual Orientation and Reading Nabokov)
Vladimir Nabokov's novels provoke a unique anxiety of interpretation that fuses hermeneutic and sexual anxieties. The article explores the simultaneous desire to interpret and the fear and shame of interpretation that Nabokov's fiction works to produce. This double bind leads to a condition of interpretive panic that takes other critics as objects of aggression and transposes to a metafictive plane the dynamics of reaction more commonly associate…
"Children in "The Master and Margarita
What If Nabokov Had Written “Dvoinik”? Reading Literature Preposterously
Flesh to Metal
Happy Moscow
Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War
Delicate Markers
Delicate Markers is the first book-length study of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Invitation to a Beheading (1935-36), a masterpiece that has received a great deal of scholarly attention, second only to Lolita, among Nabokov's works. Contrary to the prevailing critical practice of interpreting the novel along specific lines, such as political or metaphysical, Shapiro considers its diverse subtexts, the implicit meanings, thereby achieving more complex …
The Return and Other Stories
On Soviet Subjects and the Scholars Who Make Them
When a Communist Writes Gothic
Eros nevozmozhnogo
The Cultural Front
Revolutionary Anorexia (Nep as Female Complaint)
Mise en abîme
Of Crime, Utopia, and Repressive Complements
Therefore," I said, somewhat bewildered, "we would have to eat again from the Tree of Knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?""Quite right," he answered. "And that's the last chapter in the history of the world."Heinrich von Kleist, "On the Marionette Theatre"On the morning of 11 May 1876, a young seamstress pushed her stepdaughter out the window of their Petersburg apartment. The apparent reason for this attempted infanticide (mi…
The Case of Chubarov Alley
A R T I C L E THE CASE O F CHUBAROV ALLEY: COLLECTIVE RAPE, UTOPIAN DESIRE AND THE MENTALITY O F NEP* ERIC N A I M A N (Boulder, CO, U.S.A.) Societies can be described by the most flagrant infractions o f their be- havioral codes. Conduct that offends and shocks is conduct to be studied, for it tells us much about the essential core o f the collective entity that has identi- fied it as a threat. In 1926 a crime in Leningrad outraged Soviet politi…
The Thematic Mythology of Andrej Platonov
On Soviet Subjects and the Scholars Who Make Them
Eros nevozmozhnogo
Of Crime, Utopia, and Repressive Complements
Therefore," I said, somewhat bewildered, "we would have to eat again from the Tree of Knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?""Quite right," he answered. "And that's the last chapter in the history of the world."Heinrich von Kleist, "On the Marionette Theatre"On the morning of 11 May 1876, a young seamstress pushed her stepdaughter out the window of their Petersburg apartment. The apparent reason for this attempted infanticide (mi…
The Thematic Mythology of Andrej Platonov
The Case of Chubarov Alley
A R T I C L E THE CASE O F CHUBAROV ALLEY: COLLECTIVE RAPE, UTOPIAN DESIRE AND THE MENTALITY O F NEP* ERIC N A I M A N (Boulder, CO, U.S.A.) Societies can be described by the most flagrant infractions o f their be- havioral codes. Conduct that offends and shocks is conduct to be studied, for it tells us much about the essential core o f the collective entity that has identi- fied it as a threat. In 1926 a crime in Leningrad outraged Soviet politi…
Of Crime, Utopia, and Repressive Complements
Therefore," I said, somewhat bewildered, "we would have to eat again from the Tree of Knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?""Quite right," he answered. "And that's the last chapter in the history of the world."Heinrich von Kleist, "On the Marionette Theatre"On the morning of 11 May 1876, a young seamstress pushed her stepdaughter out the window of their Petersburg apartment. The apparent reason for this attempted infanticide (mi…
Mise en abîme
Revolutionary Anorexia (Nep as Female Complaint)
The Cultural Front
Eros nevozmozhnogo
When a Communist Writes Gothic
Delicate Markers
Delicate Markers is the first book-length study of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Invitation to a Beheading (1935-36), a masterpiece that has received a great deal of scholarly attention, second only to Lolita, among Nabokov's works. Contrary to the prevailing critical practice of interpreting the novel along specific lines, such as political or metaphysical, Shapiro considers its diverse subtexts, the implicit meanings, thereby achieving more complex …
The Return and Other Stories
On Soviet Subjects and the Scholars Who Make Them
Happy Moscow
Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War
What If Nabokov Had Written “Dvoinik”? Reading Literature Preposterously
Flesh to Metal
"Children in "The Master and Margarita
The Most Secret Quintessence of Life
Hermophobia (On Sexual Orientation and Reading Nabokov)
Vladimir Nabokov's novels provoke a unique anxiety of interpretation that fuses hermeneutic and sexual anxieties. The article explores the simultaneous desire to interpret and the fear and shame of interpretation that Nabokov's fiction works to produce. This double bind leads to a condition of interpretive panic that takes other critics as objects of aggression and transposes to a metafictive plane the dynamics of reaction more commonly associate…
Kalganov
When Nabokov Writes Badly
This article explores the role of bad writing in Nabokov's work, examining in particular the tension between morality and aesthetics in Laughter in the Dark , a novel that Nabokov made more aesthetically spare in his rendition of its Russian forerunner ( Kamera obscura ) into English. The novel should be read as a polemic with Tolstoy's manifesto on “good,” “bad,” “fake” and “perverted” art, Chto takoe iskusstvo ? Although several scholars have a…
Afterword
Platonov studies continue to revolve around questions of resistance. Each article in this special section begins by articulating the parameters of a paradigm and then shows how Andrei Platonov distorts or subverts the model in significant ways. The author otDzhan remains an unruly figure, impatient with the stereotypes that nonetheless fuel his work, if only primarily through opposition. Once, the question was how to determine Platonov's attitude…
Nabokov, Perversely
In an original and provocative reading of Vladimir Nabokov's work and the pleasures and perils to which its readers are subjected, Eric Naiman explores the significance and consequences of Nabokov's insistence on bringing the issue of art's essential perversity to the fore. Nabokov's fiction is notorious for the interpretive panic it occasions in its readers, the sense that no matter how hard he or she tries, the reader has not gotten Nabokov "ri…
Sex in Public
“There was something almost crude about it all…” – reading Crime and Punishment ’s epilogue hard against the grain
This article employs a strategy of “adversarial reading,” seeking to find complexity and contradiction in the seemingly monologic epilogue to Crime and Punishment. Since the novel’s most resistant and perverse interpreters, and in particular Svidrigailov, have vanished from the text prior to the opening of the epilogue, it is the reader’s challenge to carry forward these characters’ approach to textual interpretation and keep alive the novel’s re…
Art (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · History (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (6 works) · History (5 works)