“Vladimir Nabokov was wont to fall into a reverie over nail clippings, bitten-off cuticles, tufts of lint plucked off a sleeve, bits of food picked from between the teeth and spat out. After disposing of these tiny scraps of human life, no one thinks of them any more. Since matter is neither created nor destroyed, what becomes of them? They go on existing, but in a realm beyond human concern. Nabokov called them the darlings of oblivion.
After nursing two of my children through week-long stomach viruses and then watching them bounce off to school this morning as if nothing had happened, I’ve been thinking about how much of human life consists of events that are also darlings of oblivion—the stomach cramps, the headaches, the sleepless nights, the full glasses of milk that are knocked over and spilled across the clean kitchen floors, the flat tires, the dead batteries, the traffic jams, the appointments that are late. Entire days can be lost to these events; they can be, at the time, as absorbing as tragedy; then, once they have passed, they are forgotten. How much of human life disappears into oblivion like this? These darlings almost never find their way into literature. And why is that?…”
~ D.G. Myers (Excerpt from May 9, 2013 post: Darlings of Oblivion)
From D. G. Myers blog: I am a faculty member in the Melton Center for Jewish Studies at the Ohio State University, I am the author of The Elephants Teach (Chicago, 2006) and coeditor (with Paul M. Hedeen) of Unrelenting Readers (Story Line, 2004). Educated in the public schools of Riverside, I earned my degrees from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where I founded the literary magazine Quarry (later Quarry West) with Raymond Carver; Washington University in St. Louis, where I wrote a masters thesis on Stanley Elkin under Stanley Elkin; and Northwestern University, where I held the TriQuarterlyFellowship and studied under Gerald Graff and Joseph Epstein. For twenty years I taught at Texas A&M University. Now I live in Columbus with my wife Naomi and our four children: Dov, Saul, Isaac, and Miriam (“Mimi”).
Thought provoking!
It is Susan. It is.
There must be a huge debris pile by now. Hey! That’s probably how Mt. Everest was formed.
Funny!
I don’t know – I think literature is replete with moments like this. These ‘darlings of oblivion’ often provide the texture to character development – the concentrated effort to make the perfect part in one’s hair, the rituals of morning, the details of an evening…
He has a daughter named Mimi. I’m sure you didn’t get that far in the post. With a daughter named Mimi, how far off the mark could this man be?
I know about his daughter – Victor Borge also had a daughter named Mimi. I always found comfort in that when people would call me “Minnie” (though I will cop to feeling a little weird about it after reading Lolita the first time)
So you know him and his daughter. Are there any limits to your understanding and knowledge? As to Lolita, not for me. For same reason.
Laughing – I’m an ignoramus compared to you!! I don’t ‘know’ him – I know of him. I’m barely treading water over here – throw me a life raft will you? And the truth of the matter is, my literary knowledge pales in comparison to Lori’s.
Don’t drag Lori into this. She operates at a different level, one I can’t even aspire to. Let’s just you and I wallow in the muck down below.
Gosh, I step away from the computer for a few hours and the plaudits begin to roll in. I am not worthy! Between this lovely compliment and last night’s parking attendant, who initially mistook me for Celine Dion (clearly the guy needs to upgrade his eyeglass prescription QUICKLY), I’m taking the rest of the week off! 🙂 And just for the record, given that the guy has a daughter named Mimi, he’s A-OK in my book, literary accomplishments be damned….
Celine Dion! Wow. I LOVE THAT!
Me, too. I reiterate that the guy obviously doesn’t see well, but it was an awfully nice compliment, so I’m going with it. 🙂