Subject
Nabokov and Faulkner (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Matthew Morris <mmorris@netunlimited.net>
Does anyone know if VN ever read The Sound and the Fury or
As I Lay Dying? I know that Edmund Wilson recommended that Nabokov read
Light in August, a work which, in my opinion, Nabokov rightly hated. But
even Faulkner admitted that his greatest works were also two of his
earliest--S and F and AILD.
And there are interesting similarities between S and F and Lolita. The
inital inspiration for both works came in the form of an image--in the
Faulkner, it was of course the picture of Caddy's muddy underwear that F
saw in his mind's eye; in Lolita, the picture that the ape drew of the
inside of his bars. Has anyone ever explored this connection? Was Nabokov
conscious of it?
I'll agree with VN that post-As I Lay Dying Faulkner is pretty bad, often
overdone, stuff. But S and F, and AILD, are, as Demon might put it, grand
stuff...
Does anyone know if VN ever read The Sound and the Fury or
As I Lay Dying? I know that Edmund Wilson recommended that Nabokov read
Light in August, a work which, in my opinion, Nabokov rightly hated. But
even Faulkner admitted that his greatest works were also two of his
earliest--S and F and AILD.
And there are interesting similarities between S and F and Lolita. The
inital inspiration for both works came in the form of an image--in the
Faulkner, it was of course the picture of Caddy's muddy underwear that F
saw in his mind's eye; in Lolita, the picture that the ape drew of the
inside of his bars. Has anyone ever explored this connection? Was Nabokov
conscious of it?
I'll agree with VN that post-As I Lay Dying Faulkner is pretty bad, often
overdone, stuff. But S and F, and AILD, are, as Demon might put it, grand
stuff...