Excerpts: Nabokov, Wallace, and the Incredible Shrinking
Book
...I was vaguely shocked and cautiously appalled to learn last week that
Vladimir Nabokov's "new" novel, The Original of Laura, due for release in
August, isn't, in fact, much of a novel at all [...] Yet, the hype that has been
building around this book for years - years! - has totally eclipsed the fact
that the book is, in fact, actually "138 index cards" [...]Which makes one
wonder how bad a deal Playboy, which bought the rights to excerpt the new book,
got. Is the Playboy tease going to be flash fiction? [...] why is it that when
it comes to the world of Nabokov we are all suddenly academics? I know of few
people outside of the academic world who purchase annotated works, yet I have
literally dozens of friends who have purchased, and devoured, The Annotated
Lolita [...] the thrill that I know I get and others must get as well of Nabokov
scholarship. Enjoying what the master wrote, how he wrote it. Puzzling the
pieces together.Perhaps this scholarship-craze is particular to Nabokov (a
strong and unverifiable contention, I know) because his novels demand it[...]
you're entering a world, Borges-like, of so many levels, of labyrinths upon
labyrinths. Breaking the labyrinths down into the fundamentals of the maze (to
draw this metaphor out) seems helpful not only in receiving new material from
the master, but in analyzing this new composition to shed light on how the
older, more familiar works were composed[...]
Next we find the author's "more problematic question", ie, "why is it that
books are being published in the contemporary market that don't have the length
or stamina of books" and his plea to "stop the games. If you're publishing
something that's great writing but that clearly isn't a book, don't call it a
book. Call it an essay. True, you probably won't be able to sell it for $15 (the
list price of Wallace's speech). But on the other hand, think of all the paper
you'll save."
JM: Various bloggers and reviewer seem to be intrigued
by Playboy's future profits in connection to "The Original of
Laura"...Perhaps this recurrent worry already belongs to their
intended marketing! And yet, for the first time, I read about
"flash fiction", a kind of exhibitonistic overcoat, I suppose.
A puzzling preoccupation with "paper saving" or with what should
be published as "a book," as if holding a perfectly bound assemblage
of printed papers were not, per se, a pleasure to be considered,
in contrast to kindle and e-books...
PS: I was afraid that my unprofessional translation had
misconstrued Piza's words, after reading G.Shapiro's: "Daniel Piza's
review of my book, made available in English by Jansy Mello, contains a number
of serious errors. For starters, Daniel Piza's article seems to suggest that the
book contains "only a few images." Actually, there are twenty-eight
illustrations in the book."
It was when I realized that I'd skipped a sentence,
here underlined in the original: " Shapiro, também
nascido na Rússia, é professor da Cornell University, nos EUA, onde Nabokov
se radicou e deu aulas nos anos 40 e 50. [...] há apenas um punhado de
imagens em P/B dos quadros citados." ( translation: Shapiro,
who was also born in Russia, is a teacher at Cornell University, in
America, where Nabokov set roots and lectured during the forties
and the fifties). Piza's words translated as "only a few
images," literally mean "only a handful of images."
It seems that Piza has read Proust more thoroughly
than Nabokov: his comments seemed stiff and
stereotyped, clogging at VN's "aristocratic
views." (but I was reminded of a short-story,
written in Berlin, in which Nabokov describes bathers and, almost
sympathetically, a landscape full of litter and odd pieces
of furniture.)