Sandy Klein: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=5320
"Writing is not for the old, says Amis...writers are past their prime once
they reach old age.Philip Roth, Vladimir Nabokov and John Updike, he said, were
examples of how older writers lose their literary skills. Not so, said respected
novelist, poet and broadcaster James, who cited Tolstoy, Goethe and Yeats as
writers who hit new heights in old age.“Goethe was 81 years old when he met
Ulrike von Levetzow and fell in love with her. She was 19 and he made an utter
fool of himself - he was a laughing stock.“But out of it he wrote a poem - the
Marienbad Elegy- which is one of the greatest poems in
literature."
JM: Generalizations are
generally wrong (I forgot who said that, a sure sign of encroaching
dotage), a mistake Nabokov managed to avoid at all times by
exercizing acute perceptiveness and adhering to his passion
for detail - like Flaubert, to whom the saying
'Le bon Dieu est dans le detail' is often attributed. Was
Nabokov past his prime when he wrote TOoL, or is VN's age and illness the main
disturbing factor?
The way in which trivial
events tinfoil-shimmer in a sentence only to reappear later, in a
similarly accidental vein ( I have "Spring in Fialta" in mind and Akiko
Nakata's latest article in "Nabokov Studies"), and then become part of the
very essence of the thing or event being presented, is a peculiarly
Nabokovian trait.
And yet, inspite of certain recurrent themes, it
seems to me that this "accidental/essential shimmer" is almost absent
from TOoL ( or too contrived, like the hysterical writer
in his pajamas).