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Re: [NABOKOV-L] TOoL review
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*Jansy: Are you suggesting that we must find pleasure and delight in
a "deliciously unlikable" caricatural woman with her psychotic fatso of a
husband, who can only screw her as pictured in an Italian comedy of the
past? *
Jansy, I was not talking about delight in Nabokov's 'deliciously unlikable'
character, but about the delight of a Nabokov changing style and manner,
even matter. But to answer your question: Yes! I think it is possible to
find pleasure and delight in an unlikeable character ('The good reader
doesn't identify with the characters, but with the writer,' dixit Nabokov:
the highest praise a writer can give to the reader, considering him/her [ I
am very politically correct] to be able to rise to the level of the artist
artist). Why not? Is Humbert Humberty likable? Is Monsieur Pièrre likable?
Who cares! Is Iago not the real attractive character in *Othello*? The
artist always sides with the devil (I forget who said this) and how about
Satan in *Paradise Lost?* 'Likeable' has nothing to do with it; how and
when a character is able to 'screw' even less, as long as it is convincingly
portrayed and that is a matter of style. Not a matter of likeability.
*Jansy: Besides, why should "we, readers," follow the latest trend*.
I haven't said that we should follow the latest 'trend' - there is no
question of trends here: we are discussing the last, unfinished novel of a
great novelist. I just don't and never will understand why someone would
like to judge a book on basis of what it doesn't give, instead of what it
does indeed give. Why trying to find in one book what you have found in
another already?
*
*
*Jansy: I don't read Nabokov "chronologically" so I cannot evolve in line
with this (purported) evolutionary theory.*
*
*
There is no 'purported evolutionary theory': there *is* an evolution in
Nabokov's work and any other real artist's work, because the artist grows
old and evolves, just like your ordinary human being. And his/her style
changes with him/her. So, if you don't read Nabokov chronologically (no need
for the claws of inverted comma's here), how can you criticize Boyd's
article - and unjustly harsh, at that too - which is all about chronology,
about the evolution of Nabokov's *style*?
I am afraid this discussion will end in a Pninian fashion: On Likeablity,
Evolution and Screwing. So I greet thee.
Best,
Hafid Bouazza .
2010/3/9 Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
> *Hafid Bouazza*: "*Jansy, you've said it yourself: your passion is old
> fashioned. Brian Boyd's masterful and loving essay stresses a new fashioned
> Nabokov, albeit a fragmentary one...Let Nabokov's change clear your eyes
> 'with euphrasy and rue', like Milton's Adam's eyes by the angel Michael. It
> is not to the reader to shape the writer, it is up to the writer to form and
> surprise the reader...If there is a sense of dissapointment, it is not
> Nabokov who has let us down, for when and what did he promise us? If
> anything, delight, and the whole change in Boyd's attitude towards TOoL is a
> very strong and moving illustration of this: re-discovered delight!"*
>
> *JM*: Brian Boyd does, in fact, explain how his "*estimation of The
> Original of Laura has changed dramatically*" and the manner in which his
> initial disappointment... was substituted by present enthusiasm for the
> novel's "*strong beginning, a vivid middle, a wry end, and an already
> intricate design*."
> Boyd adds that, if the characters are unsympathetic, we can later discover
> that "*the heroine Flora is deliciously unlikable, and her husband, the
> neurologist Philip Wild, is an unforgettable presence ...his brilliant brain
> trying to erase his feet.*"
> In his understanding, "*Nabokov's descriptions of sex here hilariously
> unappetizing, prodigiously unsatisfying emotionally and often physically
> comic in their painful shortcomings.*" For BB, "*if there's little plot
> tension there's also headlong action from reckless Flora and comic inertia
> from Wild's repeated self-erasures*." Boyd believes that although "*Nabokov
> has focused on sex before, but never has he shown it so divorced from
> feeling*" and that he "*surely amuses and appalls us in a new way with
> the sexual activity he depicts.*"
> Boyd also finds substitute pleasures, to its lack of suspense, in "*the
> contrasts of helter-skelter narration and meditative stasis, and the puzzles
> of who has created, and who has obliterated, whom*." Another point (the
> sixth) relates to "*Philip Wild's obsession with willing his own death.
> Wild's quest is certainly singular. But many of us have wished to shed
> intense pain or discard excess weight. Wild wishes both. Many have sought to
> train the mind to control and transcend the self, through meditation, and
> Wild has not only the shape of the fattest Buddha but the same urge to
> reach nirvana (the text makes references to both) and to eliminate the
> self.."*
> B. Boyd believes that *"Nabokov has some sympathy with Wild in his
> humiliation, and so should we... All of us might wish at times we could
> control our own death or restoration but Nabokov surely presents Wild's as
> exactly the wrong way to transcend death. Eliminating the self promises no
> worthwhile passage beyond life..."*
>
> *JM*: Hafid, do you mean to indicate that what Nabokov has inverted let
> no one break asunder? Are you suggesting that we must find pleasure and
> delight in a "deliciously unlikable" caricatural woman with her psychotic
> fatso of a husband, who can only screw her as pictured in an Italian
> comedy of the past?
> Besides, why should "we, readers," follow the latest trend, find it
> shameful to be "old-fashioned" or submit to all sorts of adaptative
> psychologies that sympathetically indicate, for example, how "many of us
> have wished to shed intense pain" and "sought to train the mind to control
> and transcend the self," before concluding that "if Nabokov has some
> sympathy with Wild...so should we"?
> Another famously pompous and ridiculous figure once said "to thine own self
> be true" (Polonius,Act I, scene iii of *Hamlet) *and I confess that I'm
> not afraid of accepting this kind of "ridiculousness" when I refuse
> to follow Nabokov's very post-post modern lead into sadism and nihilism.
> I don't read Nabokov "chronologically" so I cannot evolve in line with this
> (purported) evolutionary theory.
> (btw: I was not disappointed in Nabokov, as a writer.)
>
>
> Search the archive<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en> Contact
> the Editors <nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu> Visit "Nabokov
> Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com> Visit Zembla<http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View
> Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage
> subscription options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
> co-editors.
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
a "deliciously unlikable" caricatural woman with her psychotic fatso of a
husband, who can only screw her as pictured in an Italian comedy of the
past? *
Jansy, I was not talking about delight in Nabokov's 'deliciously unlikable'
character, but about the delight of a Nabokov changing style and manner,
even matter. But to answer your question: Yes! I think it is possible to
find pleasure and delight in an unlikeable character ('The good reader
doesn't identify with the characters, but with the writer,' dixit Nabokov:
the highest praise a writer can give to the reader, considering him/her [ I
am very politically correct] to be able to rise to the level of the artist
artist). Why not? Is Humbert Humberty likable? Is Monsieur Pièrre likable?
Who cares! Is Iago not the real attractive character in *Othello*? The
artist always sides with the devil (I forget who said this) and how about
Satan in *Paradise Lost?* 'Likeable' has nothing to do with it; how and
when a character is able to 'screw' even less, as long as it is convincingly
portrayed and that is a matter of style. Not a matter of likeability.
*Jansy: Besides, why should "we, readers," follow the latest trend*.
I haven't said that we should follow the latest 'trend' - there is no
question of trends here: we are discussing the last, unfinished novel of a
great novelist. I just don't and never will understand why someone would
like to judge a book on basis of what it doesn't give, instead of what it
does indeed give. Why trying to find in one book what you have found in
another already?
*
*
*Jansy: I don't read Nabokov "chronologically" so I cannot evolve in line
with this (purported) evolutionary theory.*
*
*
There is no 'purported evolutionary theory': there *is* an evolution in
Nabokov's work and any other real artist's work, because the artist grows
old and evolves, just like your ordinary human being. And his/her style
changes with him/her. So, if you don't read Nabokov chronologically (no need
for the claws of inverted comma's here), how can you criticize Boyd's
article - and unjustly harsh, at that too - which is all about chronology,
about the evolution of Nabokov's *style*?
I am afraid this discussion will end in a Pninian fashion: On Likeablity,
Evolution and Screwing. So I greet thee.
Best,
Hafid Bouazza .
2010/3/9 Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
> *Hafid Bouazza*: "*Jansy, you've said it yourself: your passion is old
> fashioned. Brian Boyd's masterful and loving essay stresses a new fashioned
> Nabokov, albeit a fragmentary one...Let Nabokov's change clear your eyes
> 'with euphrasy and rue', like Milton's Adam's eyes by the angel Michael. It
> is not to the reader to shape the writer, it is up to the writer to form and
> surprise the reader...If there is a sense of dissapointment, it is not
> Nabokov who has let us down, for when and what did he promise us? If
> anything, delight, and the whole change in Boyd's attitude towards TOoL is a
> very strong and moving illustration of this: re-discovered delight!"*
>
> *JM*: Brian Boyd does, in fact, explain how his "*estimation of The
> Original of Laura has changed dramatically*" and the manner in which his
> initial disappointment... was substituted by present enthusiasm for the
> novel's "*strong beginning, a vivid middle, a wry end, and an already
> intricate design*."
> Boyd adds that, if the characters are unsympathetic, we can later discover
> that "*the heroine Flora is deliciously unlikable, and her husband, the
> neurologist Philip Wild, is an unforgettable presence ...his brilliant brain
> trying to erase his feet.*"
> In his understanding, "*Nabokov's descriptions of sex here hilariously
> unappetizing, prodigiously unsatisfying emotionally and often physically
> comic in their painful shortcomings.*" For BB, "*if there's little plot
> tension there's also headlong action from reckless Flora and comic inertia
> from Wild's repeated self-erasures*." Boyd believes that although "*Nabokov
> has focused on sex before, but never has he shown it so divorced from
> feeling*" and that he "*surely amuses and appalls us in a new way with
> the sexual activity he depicts.*"
> Boyd also finds substitute pleasures, to its lack of suspense, in "*the
> contrasts of helter-skelter narration and meditative stasis, and the puzzles
> of who has created, and who has obliterated, whom*." Another point (the
> sixth) relates to "*Philip Wild's obsession with willing his own death.
> Wild's quest is certainly singular. But many of us have wished to shed
> intense pain or discard excess weight. Wild wishes both. Many have sought to
> train the mind to control and transcend the self, through meditation, and
> Wild has not only the shape of the fattest Buddha but the same urge to
> reach nirvana (the text makes references to both) and to eliminate the
> self.."*
> B. Boyd believes that *"Nabokov has some sympathy with Wild in his
> humiliation, and so should we... All of us might wish at times we could
> control our own death or restoration but Nabokov surely presents Wild's as
> exactly the wrong way to transcend death. Eliminating the self promises no
> worthwhile passage beyond life..."*
>
> *JM*: Hafid, do you mean to indicate that what Nabokov has inverted let
> no one break asunder? Are you suggesting that we must find pleasure and
> delight in a "deliciously unlikable" caricatural woman with her psychotic
> fatso of a husband, who can only screw her as pictured in an Italian
> comedy of the past?
> Besides, why should "we, readers," follow the latest trend, find it
> shameful to be "old-fashioned" or submit to all sorts of adaptative
> psychologies that sympathetically indicate, for example, how "many of us
> have wished to shed intense pain" and "sought to train the mind to control
> and transcend the self," before concluding that "if Nabokov has some
> sympathy with Wild...so should we"?
> Another famously pompous and ridiculous figure once said "to thine own self
> be true" (Polonius,Act I, scene iii of *Hamlet) *and I confess that I'm
> not afraid of accepting this kind of "ridiculousness" when I refuse
> to follow Nabokov's very post-post modern lead into sadism and nihilism.
> I don't read Nabokov "chronologically" so I cannot evolve in line with this
> (purported) evolutionary theory.
> (btw: I was not disappointed in Nabokov, as a writer.)
>
>
> Search the archive<http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en> Contact
> the Editors <nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu> Visit "Nabokov
> Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com> Visit Zembla<http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View
> Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage
> subscription options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
> co-editors.
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/