Fulmerford via Google Reader:
Freud as a Fictional Character via nabolog on 2/4/10: "Bossing Freud
Around: Freud as a Fictional Character." http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/02/freud-as-a-fictional-character.html#ixzz0edzb8e7b
JM: When Nabokov mentions "Tobakoff and
Nicot" in ADA a wholly invented character is placed side by
side another,whose name one may find in an actual birth-register
or history book. This results from a
particular "fictional device" VN applies to serve his
various purposes. When he refers to Freud (an excelent writer and a
brilliant scientist btw.), one has to take this name in the same stride as
VN's mentioning Nicot, Rabelais, Pope, Marat and a host of
others.
In "The New Yorker" article we meet an
opinionated reporter who apparently doesn't distinguish
between political cartoons and a depiction of Twiddle-Dum, nor
what allegory, allusion,.pastiche, information, analogy,thought and
imagination mean.
What "a fictional character" has become at
the Austrian pannel he attended (and in his eyes), or why
he accused himself for not having been "more
respectful"* (towards whom?), remains a mystery to me. I hope he is
not representative of "The New Yorker" editorship or cultural
ambience.
...............................................................................................
*[...] I should have been more
respectful. The topic at hand? Sigmund Freud. Specifically, Freud as a
fictional character. Three authors were there to speak about their experience of
using Freud in their novels... I had read Freud in college, like everyone else,
but had never thought about what it would be like to use him as a fictional
character. As James Wood writes in his book "How Fiction Works": Nabokov used to
say that he pushed his characters around like serfs or chess pieces-he had no
time for metaphorical ignorance and impotence whereby authors like to say, "I
don't know what happened, by my character just got away from same and did his
own thing." I have to suspect that even Nabokov would have had a hard time
pushing Freud around...Brenda Webster, the author of "Vienna Triangle," a novel
documenting the bizarre and twisted relationship between Freud and his brilliant
disciple Viktor Tausk (who later committed suicide), said she approached the
matter in a roundabout way, preferring to avoid a head-on confrontation
with Freud...Finally, Selden Edwards...who is a high-school English teacher,
made an interesting point: today, Freud is taught as literature, not science.
Freud's theories, Selden continued, despite being completely out of fashion
today, are still powerful tools for storytellers. And maybe-I realized, as
the panel ended-the man is too...
One Comment online:
I imagine Nabokov would
have quite enjoyed pushing Freud around. He certainly did a number on Freudians;
several of Nabokov's prefaces explicitly mock psychoanalytic readings. From
"Lolita," whose protagonist, Humbert Humbert, has been institutionalized: "I
discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling
with psychiatrists...inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in
style...teasing them with fake 'primal scenes'...I stayed on for a whole
month after I was quite well (sleeping admirably and eating like a
schoolgirl). And then I added another week just for the pleasure of taking on a
powerful newcomer, a displaced (and, surely, deranged) celebrity, known for his
knack of making patients believe they had witnessed their own
conception."
Reply: Thanks for that; it's a great
excerpt. I'm a huge Nabokov fan, but I make no claims as an expert. Either way,
I still think it's fair to argue there's a distinction. Sure, it's easy to
see how Nabokov would love to toy with a pyschoanalysist, and mock the quackery,
but if this were a battle of the books, and the two were pitted against one
another, it'd be a hard one to call, no?