James Twiggs: Finally, a thank you to Jansy for her interesting
take on Wilson's famous essay on THE TURN OF THE
SCREW.
J.M: A
very good discussion about Nabokov, "art for art's sake" and Wilson's
"arbitrary introduction of social commentary" (check for
a full commentary on p.21), can be found in the Introduction by
Simon Karlinsky to "Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya; or,
Affinities and Disagreements" (University of California Press,
2001).
From the exchange of letters
bt. V.N and E.W. here are a few quotes, related to Henry James, since an
amusing "edge" may be discerned in Wilson's February 3 1942 observation about
the translation of "Laughter in the Dark" if we keep in mind Nabokov's
letter to "dear Bunny", written in November 28,1941, and in which he
criticizes Henry James.
Nabokov:
"Yesterday I read the Aspern Papers. No. He writes
with a sharp nib and the ink is very pale and there is very little of it in his
inkpot [...] The style is artistic but it is not the style of an artist. For
instance: the man is smoking a cigar in the dark and another person sees the
red tip from the window. Red tip makes one think of a red pencil or a
dog licking itself[...] in fact the flow is blunt[...] Henry James is definitely
for non-smokers." (page
59)
E.Wilson: " I have
just read Laughter in the Dark [...] Did you do the translation yourself? -
because it is very good. I noticed, by the way, that at one point the
tip of somebody's cigar is referred
to."
( I understand E.Wilson was
not as fond of "Laughter in the Dark" as he'd been of "TRLSK", particularly
its "implausible" last chapters...)