J.Aisenberg: considering that if you're human
then you're simply going to be inconsistent, because humans are
always inconsistent no matter how great they are as artists [...]And
the reason many people think his lifelong denunciation of Freud was weird and
can't take it at face value is probably for two reasons: 1. its quite
odd for someone to bitch so much so often so vociferously about something
they think is so damned wrong; 2. the Freud he brings up in things like Lolita
don't seem that much deeper than [...] not that I'm all that sympathetic to
Freud myself, but then I don't feel compelled to talk about him all the time and
design everything I write to deliberately repel those who
do.
G.Shimanovich:
Speaking of VN and “defects” I would love someone to write of how
VN’s style evolved from “The Gift” to “Ada”. Or, may be, I should just reread
both.
J. Studdard: There. Said. Done. If I am now to be ex-communicated,
please be gentle.
[EDNote: I hope Mr. Studdard's comments will
be taken with the grain of salt his entertaining list of favorites
suggests. BTW, for those who may not have noticed, we made the quarterly
EDSwitch on July 1, and I am now your humble servant for the next three
months. ~SB]
..................................................................
JM: Welcome, SB,
to moderate a rather
hyperbolic, List...
For Richard Rorty, the obsessive
noisy animosity that Nabokov felt towards Freud was "the resentment of a precursor who may
already have written all one's best lines", which, of course is another
hyperbole, not to say a very curiously imprecise assessment of VN's genius,
and of Freud's as well.
In his biography of Gogol, VN
remarked that "The crudest curriculum vitae
crows and flaps its wings in a style peculiar to the undersigner. I doubt
whether you can even give your telephone number without giving something of
yourself". Nevertheless, he insistently affirmed that
his life was not to be mistaken for his work and that his characters "are outside my inner
self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral façade - demons placed there
merely to show that they have been booted out"
- unlike Wilde (“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my
works.”) ?
Like GS, I'm inclined to reread both,
The Gift and Ada, but not to check any literary evolution
since, for me, any old VN novel is always novel ( and I cannot
say the same about most other authors).
Thank heavens I'm not an academic
researcher ( nor a moderator!)