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[NABOKOV-L] Turning on the Magic and sentimental goodness
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Abstract of the article by Diana Trilling on "Bend Sinister" (excerpts), dated June 14, 1947, recently posted by Maurice Bouchard:
"Author argues that it is Nabokov's elaborate prose method that persuades his publishers that "Bend Sinister" is so distinguished a work of fiction. Surely writing like this is elaborate chicanery. It is not daring; it is merely willful."
The Great American Novel, 13 April 2010,Michial Farmer
"Writing qua writing doesn't get any better than Lolita, and it's no surprise that one finds echoes of its distinctive tone all through the English-language literature of the intervening decades.(I hear it most strongly, to the point of impersonation, in John Updike's A Month of Sundays, but it's there in everyone from Pynchon to Rushdie.)* ...With this in mind, the Christian may have more to fear from the philosophical implications of the novel than from any plot-level disgust over paedophilia..." Humbert Humbert is " is in love with a material form that is by its very definition ephemeral; one can be a nymphet for only so long before one grows into one of the adult women that so disgust Humbert."...To love the spiritual ideal through Dolores's bodily reality, Humbert must discard Dolores as a real individual."
JM: I selected different paragraphs by two authors who'd been particularly affected by Nabokov's verbal magic ("writing qua writing" and "writing like this"), for both seem to consider such "writing" ( or "prose method") dangerous and perverse, once it is practiced for the sake of sound and beauty and unrelated to any traditional, social or philosophical, novelistic message. Michial Farmer denies Nabokov's non post-modernist exploration of a transcendental dimension which would implicate the author in an abstract dimension of "pity, kindness, curiosity": he dismisses the "plot-level paedophilia" as being less dangerous, than its spiritual implications, to a good Christian.
By Nabokov's standards, plot is not the most important element in a novel. He writes about this aspect very clearly in his early biography of Gogol, or in S.O, when he describes the pleasure he extracts from puzzles and clever games, those that are demanded by the very rational-abstract structuring of a plot**. I gather that, for him, the "plexed artistry" and patterns he discerns in "life"are unrelated to the process of construing a plot, with its contrived symmetries, cycles and facile repetitions. It seems to me that, in a way, the cleverness of games and his disregard for ordinary morality represent his attitude towards vulgarity (philistinism and poshlost) in art. He'd be closer to the unclement angry Christians who lash against the vendors in the forecourts of the temple of "Art."
..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
*- The two sentences quoted below are unrelated (the wording is different and so is the entire context), but I hear an "echo," in Updike, of one of Nabokov's axial confessions in Lolita, related to a fantasy about the "hereafter."
Lolita, V.Nabokov: "Unless it can be proven to me...that in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke)..."
The Terrorist: p.39,Ch.2, John Updike: (Joryleen) "Suppose none of it is true - suppose you die and there's nothing there, nothing at all? What's the point of all this purity then?" [...] (Ahmad) "If none of it is true,"..."then the world is too terrible to cherish, and I would not regret leaving it."
**- Nabokov even describes "Lolita" as one of his most abstract constructions!
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"Author argues that it is Nabokov's elaborate prose method that persuades his publishers that "Bend Sinister" is so distinguished a work of fiction. Surely writing like this is elaborate chicanery. It is not daring; it is merely willful."
The Great American Novel, 13 April 2010,Michial Farmer
"Writing qua writing doesn't get any better than Lolita, and it's no surprise that one finds echoes of its distinctive tone all through the English-language literature of the intervening decades.(I hear it most strongly, to the point of impersonation, in John Updike's A Month of Sundays, but it's there in everyone from Pynchon to Rushdie.)* ...With this in mind, the Christian may have more to fear from the philosophical implications of the novel than from any plot-level disgust over paedophilia..." Humbert Humbert is " is in love with a material form that is by its very definition ephemeral; one can be a nymphet for only so long before one grows into one of the adult women that so disgust Humbert."...To love the spiritual ideal through Dolores's bodily reality, Humbert must discard Dolores as a real individual."
JM: I selected different paragraphs by two authors who'd been particularly affected by Nabokov's verbal magic ("writing qua writing" and "writing like this"), for both seem to consider such "writing" ( or "prose method") dangerous and perverse, once it is practiced for the sake of sound and beauty and unrelated to any traditional, social or philosophical, novelistic message. Michial Farmer denies Nabokov's non post-modernist exploration of a transcendental dimension which would implicate the author in an abstract dimension of "pity, kindness, curiosity": he dismisses the "plot-level paedophilia" as being less dangerous, than its spiritual implications, to a good Christian.
By Nabokov's standards, plot is not the most important element in a novel. He writes about this aspect very clearly in his early biography of Gogol, or in S.O, when he describes the pleasure he extracts from puzzles and clever games, those that are demanded by the very rational-abstract structuring of a plot**. I gather that, for him, the "plexed artistry" and patterns he discerns in "life"are unrelated to the process of construing a plot, with its contrived symmetries, cycles and facile repetitions. It seems to me that, in a way, the cleverness of games and his disregard for ordinary morality represent his attitude towards vulgarity (philistinism and poshlost) in art. He'd be closer to the unclement angry Christians who lash against the vendors in the forecourts of the temple of "Art."
..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
*- The two sentences quoted below are unrelated (the wording is different and so is the entire context), but I hear an "echo," in Updike, of one of Nabokov's axial confessions in Lolita, related to a fantasy about the "hereafter."
Lolita, V.Nabokov: "Unless it can be proven to me...that in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke)..."
The Terrorist: p.39,Ch.2, John Updike: (Joryleen) "Suppose none of it is true - suppose you die and there's nothing there, nothing at all? What's the point of all this purity then?" [...] (Ahmad) "If none of it is true,"..."then the world is too terrible to cherish, and I would not regret leaving it."
**- Nabokov even describes "Lolita" as one of his most abstract constructions!
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/