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Re: QUERY: Psycho-plagiarism?
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Keith: Does anyone know where Nabokov called biography psycho-plagiarism? It's referred to constantly, but no text that I've encountered so far cites it.
Jansy (second thoughts): After trying to get moving on the theme of "true fictions" using the internet*, inspired by Keith's query to the VN-L, I decided to resort to the two books by Andrew Field that I happen to own, after I realized that most of the entries related to "psycho-plagiarism" indicated that the best way to proceed would be through him.
My first contact with Field came through his "VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov" (1986), read soon after my interest in Nabokov was roused by "Lolita" in the early eighties. More recently I got the earlier "Nabokov, his Life in Art" (1967), which I found among the used books being advertised by the library of Robert Morris Junior College Morris (nobody had checked it out until that date). If I didn'd find my pencil markings on various pages, I could have sworn that I had never set my eyes on it! I started to browse through it right away to find myself enchanted once again by Field's way of developping his arguments and presenting his finds. On the theme of Nabokov and Biographies there's a lot to rediscover already in the first chapter, travelling from a deconstrution about the life of Pushkin's ancestor Abram Gannibal, through Fyodor's own attempts in "The Gift" before we reach "RLSK."
Not only great novels invite us to read them over and over, sometimes good (fair or unfair) criticism is also worth several readings, not only short dips to glean one information or another. As he acknowledges in his 1967 "In Place of a Foreword": "This book, therefore, can attempt a service of greater usefulness than can ordinarily be assumed by the literary critic.."
Perhaps now I'll discover what Nabokov meant by this particular term:"psycho-plagiarism" that, until now, has left me totally miffed (after all, who is copying the mind or soul of whom? ) Was he the first author to use it?
..........................................
* - "What masterpiece was written in a Buick?", by Joel Conaroe (the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation., November 2, 1986)N The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov. By Andrew Field. : "As it happens, Nabokov, in whose work the subject of biography looms large, was suspicious of ''mucking biographitists,'' who commit ''psychoplagiarism'' by using what an author has created to give an impression of the inner life. If the biographitist of his own peripatetic history errs, however, it is on the side not of looting the artist's canon but of substituting details for imaginative speculation and analysis."
WHAT MASTERPIECE WAS WRITTEN IN A BUICK? - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/.../what-masterpiece-was-writt... -
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Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
Jansy (second thoughts): After trying to get moving on the theme of "true fictions" using the internet*, inspired by Keith's query to the VN-L, I decided to resort to the two books by Andrew Field that I happen to own, after I realized that most of the entries related to "psycho-plagiarism" indicated that the best way to proceed would be through him.
My first contact with Field came through his "VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov" (1986), read soon after my interest in Nabokov was roused by "Lolita" in the early eighties. More recently I got the earlier "Nabokov, his Life in Art" (1967), which I found among the used books being advertised by the library of Robert Morris Junior College Morris (nobody had checked it out until that date). If I didn'd find my pencil markings on various pages, I could have sworn that I had never set my eyes on it! I started to browse through it right away to find myself enchanted once again by Field's way of developping his arguments and presenting his finds. On the theme of Nabokov and Biographies there's a lot to rediscover already in the first chapter, travelling from a deconstrution about the life of Pushkin's ancestor Abram Gannibal, through Fyodor's own attempts in "The Gift" before we reach "RLSK."
Not only great novels invite us to read them over and over, sometimes good (fair or unfair) criticism is also worth several readings, not only short dips to glean one information or another. As he acknowledges in his 1967 "In Place of a Foreword": "This book, therefore, can attempt a service of greater usefulness than can ordinarily be assumed by the literary critic.."
Perhaps now I'll discover what Nabokov meant by this particular term:"psycho-plagiarism" that, until now, has left me totally miffed (after all, who is copying the mind or soul of whom? ) Was he the first author to use it?
..........................................
* - "What masterpiece was written in a Buick?", by Joel Conaroe (the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation., November 2, 1986)N The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov. By Andrew Field. : "As it happens, Nabokov, in whose work the subject of biography looms large, was suspicious of ''mucking biographitists,'' who commit ''psychoplagiarism'' by using what an author has created to give an impression of the inner life. If the biographitist of his own peripatetic history errs, however, it is on the side not of looting the artist's canon but of substituting details for imaginative speculation and analysis."
WHAT MASTERPIECE WAS WRITTEN IN A BUICK? - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/.../what-masterpiece-was-writt... -
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/