While reading Roberto Bolaño's thick novel "2666" I found a series of lines about coincidences, narrated while three scholars (working on a physically elusive German writer named Benno von Archimboldo) visit a Swiss mental-asylum to meet Edwin Johns, a British painter. Johns had cut-off one of his hands and had it treated by a taxidermist to turn it into the spiralling center of his most successful painting. At a certain point of their interview, Johns notes that the pains which accumulate from the daily routine of fighting for survival are the opposite of coincidence. He sees coincidences as an expression of liberty and contrary to law and order. For him, they are another face of human destiny. “Coincidence, if you’ll permit me the simile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on our planet. A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures. In that hurricane, in that osseous implosion, we find communion. The communion of coincidence and effect and the communion of effect with us.”
In her article about "Neutral Evolution and Aesthetics: Vladimir Nabokov and Insect Mimicry" (fendersen.com/Nabokov.htm ) we read: "Though most of the following is concerned with recent advances in evolutionary biology... and how they are related to Nabokov's interests in accidental functionality, coincidental patterns, and mimicry, I would like to begin by offering a brief introduction to the literary complement of these same interests. One of the hallmarks of Nabokov's style is his use of coincidences to structure narrative events in such a way as to suggest intentionality, i.e., teleological organization...Science is only interested in meaningful patterns (why do a number of galaxies form spiral shapes?) not meaningless coincidences (why is there a "big dipper" and a "little dipper" in the stars?). If one insists on seeing coincidences as meaningful, then one is forced to look for a hidden cause, some inherent guiding principle, purpose, or an intentional being behind the events.//In Nabokov's novel Pale Fire, the protagonist, John Shade...declares..."It dawned on me that this Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme; Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream But topsy-turvical coincidence, Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense." Some thing or someone seemed to be making "plexed artistry" or "ornaments/of accidents and possibilities." Apparently, whether or not there truly is a God or an afterlife is not as interesting to Nabokov as the fact that it is suggestive coincidences that give the impression life is like a novel with an omniscient and somewhat playful author."
I'm intrigued by Victoria Alexander's conclusion that Nabokov's use of coincidences constitutes one of the hallmarks of his style, or their relation to the novel's apparent teleological organization ( "narrative teleology")*. In "Strong Opinions" Nabokov considers how coincidences appear forced when they take place in a novel and how natural their visitation to the living seems to be whereas, some time later, in the novel "Ada" (p.283), he introduces what I see as a paradox: "Some law of logic should fix the number of coincidences, in a given domain, after which they cease to be coincidences, and form, instead, the living organism of a new truth", unless we understand that any new truth must remain limited to mankind's apprehension of the natural world and man's place in the universe.
Alexander's point is more explicitly presented when she writes that Nabokov was not as interested in ascertaining that God or an afterlife exist, as he was in putting coincidences to work for him - by having them suggest that "life is like a novel." It seems to me that such an intention would imply in a wish on Nabokov's part to dupe the reader, instead of playing games with some of them. Here is another little story told by Nabokov:: "A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish – but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence." (the exactness of the date is informative of the man's alert wish to control events, something which I doubt Nabokov had been unaware of when he constructed this exemplary and ironic nano-fairytale).
........................................................................................................
* - Quoting Alexander: "Nabokov had a profound respect for coincidences as coincidences. One of his favorite examples of a selectively neutral instance of "mimicry" was a butterfly wing marking that looked like a drop of dew with a glint of light reflected in it. As he described it, a line along the wing edge running through the "dewdrop" was shifted in a perfect imitation of refraction – masterfully rendered, but still a coincidence. It is difficult to imagine what function or advantage could be ascribed to an imitation of a dewdrop on, say, a Blue's wing. It must be admitted, then, that some forms of "mimicry" may be imposed by the lepidopterist's powers of interpretation. Since such cases of false mimicry conferred no reproductive advantage – it merely amused – Nabokov notes that it "seemed to have been invented by some waggish artists precisely for the intelligent eyes of man." [...] "Cosmic teleology concerns the suggestion of intention in the natural world. I use the term narrative teleology to designate the suggestion of intention in fictional worlds. Nabokov wrote of both cosmic and narrative telos as emergent phenomena. We can find examples of emergent telos or intentionality in Nabokov's The Real Life of Sebastian Knight..."
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.