In todays commemoration of Bloomsday, an author turns to Nabokov when explaining why Ulysses personally affected him:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/opinion/16mccann.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Vladimir Nabokov once said that the purpose of storytelling is “to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”
This is the function of books — we learn how to live even if we weren’t there. Fiction gives us access to a very real history. Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:28:36 -0400
From: gs33@CORNELL.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] VN BIBLIOGRAPHY
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Gavriel Shapiro, The Sublime Artist's Studio: Nabokov and Painting (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2009).
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2559-9.
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
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