Subject
Propose a limited-edition artist's book of The Real Life of
Sebastian Knight
Sebastian Knight
From
Date
Body
Hello everyone,
I'm team-teaching a course this semester entitled "Artists' Books and
Writers' Tales," which includes both a weekly seminar (focusing largely
on discussions of fiction that asks questions about the nature of books
and reading) and a weekly studio (in which students learn to make
books). Artists' books, or livres d'artistes, are book-objects that
take a variety of forms.
We just read The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and I gave the students
the following assignment for Wednesday, Feb. 18, which I thought List
members might enjoy. Perhaps you would like to submit your own proposals
to the List?
I also include a synopsis of our discussions of the novel (spoiler
alert). As you can tell by that synopsis, we read the novel in
conjunction with two chapters ("Worlds Under Erasure" and "Chinese-Box
Worlds") from Brian McHale's book Postmodernist Fiction. The students
are also writing "close reading" papers on RLSK in which they choose a
passage that draws on a concept such as language, letters, authorship,
reading, books, and so on, and then analyze it in detail.
:) SES
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
College of the Holy Cross
***
Assignment
In the spirit of Borges, who describes the books he may write someday,
and in an effort to bring our course’s literary and visual components
together, I’d like you to imagine creating a limited-edition artist’s
book of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Your proposed book should
incorporate the text of Nabokov’s novel and convey its meaning through
the book’s own visual, spatial, or conceptual form. What would such a
book look like? How would one read it? The artists’ books that you’ve
seen in the studio, in exhibits at the Cantor, or in the pages of
Smith’s Structure of the Visual Book may inspire you. This is only a
proposal, so you’re not limited by your resources or technical skills.
Please describe your book in a brief paragraph, about as long as this
one (150 words), and bring it to class on Wednesday, Feb. 18. You may
include a sketch if you wish.
Summary
We began by looking at this novel in two contexts: narrative genres
(biography, autobiography, detective story) and doubled relationships
like those in Borges’s “Theme of the Traitor and Hero”: subject/
biographer; dead man/ detective; hero/ narrator; character/ author;
writer/ reader.
There are two primary stories in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight: the
story of Sebastian’s life, told in the third person (“he”) more or less
chronologically from birth to death; and the story of writing about
Sebastian’s life, told in the first person (“I”) by his half-brother V.,
more or less in the order in which he conducts his research and
increases his understanding of Sebastian. The chart of the novel’s
structure that I constructed for you roughly maps out the plot of each
story.
As the novel shifts back and forth between these two stories, however,
the relationship between them becomes increasingly ambiguous. Their
apparent reality seems to flicker, in keeping with the notions of
“worlds under erasure” and “Chinese-box worlds” discussed in McHale’s
Postmodernist Fiction. Sebastian’s writings, as V. summarizes them for
us, become “recursive structures,” in McHale’s terms, that mirror or
distort the plot of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight: a “strange loop”
(Mr. Siller/Silbermann in The Back of the Moon, minor characters inThe
Doubtful Asphodel), an “infinite regress” (a message perhaps encoded in
a wrongly addressed letter in Lost Property), or, more often, a
“mise-en-abyme” (as when elements of Success parallel V’s search).
In general, the “research theme” of Sebastian’s work (p. 104), which
extends to a novel about a dying man and an unfinished “fictitious
biography” (p. 40), is the theme of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
itself.
We concluded by glancing at the final paragraph, where V. first
proclaims that “any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its
undulations” (p. 204), and then, using the metaphor of a stage play,
recapitulates the plot of the book he has just written about Sebastian.
At the play’s end, however, V. can’t get out of his role. The final
sentence is divided into three parts, joined by the word “or,” and
suggesting at least three possible interpretations (or, in McHale’s
terms, multiple endings). The sentence’s first two parts suggest that
V.’s situation could be resolved by viewing one of the novel’s two
competing stories as the “real” one: thus, to paraphrase Mary Kate [a
student in the class], either “I” is really Sebastian, or else
“Sebastian” is really I. But the last part of the sentence adds a
third possibility: “or perhaps we are both someone whom neither of us
knows” (p. 205). In McHale’s terms, this is an instance of “characters
in search of an author”: V. suddenly realizes that he and Sebastian may
actually be literary characters. In that case, who is this “someone
else” who can be both of them, but whom neither of them knows? The
author of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight? or the reader of The Real
Life of Sebastian Knight? We’re back where we started!
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/
I'm team-teaching a course this semester entitled "Artists' Books and
Writers' Tales," which includes both a weekly seminar (focusing largely
on discussions of fiction that asks questions about the nature of books
and reading) and a weekly studio (in which students learn to make
books). Artists' books, or livres d'artistes, are book-objects that
take a variety of forms.
We just read The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and I gave the students
the following assignment for Wednesday, Feb. 18, which I thought List
members might enjoy. Perhaps you would like to submit your own proposals
to the List?
I also include a synopsis of our discussions of the novel (spoiler
alert). As you can tell by that synopsis, we read the novel in
conjunction with two chapters ("Worlds Under Erasure" and "Chinese-Box
Worlds") from Brian McHale's book Postmodernist Fiction. The students
are also writing "close reading" papers on RLSK in which they choose a
passage that draws on a concept such as language, letters, authorship,
reading, books, and so on, and then analyze it in detail.
:) SES
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
College of the Holy Cross
***
Assignment
In the spirit of Borges, who describes the books he may write someday,
and in an effort to bring our course’s literary and visual components
together, I’d like you to imagine creating a limited-edition artist’s
book of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Your proposed book should
incorporate the text of Nabokov’s novel and convey its meaning through
the book’s own visual, spatial, or conceptual form. What would such a
book look like? How would one read it? The artists’ books that you’ve
seen in the studio, in exhibits at the Cantor, or in the pages of
Smith’s Structure of the Visual Book may inspire you. This is only a
proposal, so you’re not limited by your resources or technical skills.
Please describe your book in a brief paragraph, about as long as this
one (150 words), and bring it to class on Wednesday, Feb. 18. You may
include a sketch if you wish.
Summary
We began by looking at this novel in two contexts: narrative genres
(biography, autobiography, detective story) and doubled relationships
like those in Borges’s “Theme of the Traitor and Hero”: subject/
biographer; dead man/ detective; hero/ narrator; character/ author;
writer/ reader.
There are two primary stories in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight: the
story of Sebastian’s life, told in the third person (“he”) more or less
chronologically from birth to death; and the story of writing about
Sebastian’s life, told in the first person (“I”) by his half-brother V.,
more or less in the order in which he conducts his research and
increases his understanding of Sebastian. The chart of the novel’s
structure that I constructed for you roughly maps out the plot of each
story.
As the novel shifts back and forth between these two stories, however,
the relationship between them becomes increasingly ambiguous. Their
apparent reality seems to flicker, in keeping with the notions of
“worlds under erasure” and “Chinese-box worlds” discussed in McHale’s
Postmodernist Fiction. Sebastian’s writings, as V. summarizes them for
us, become “recursive structures,” in McHale’s terms, that mirror or
distort the plot of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight: a “strange loop”
(Mr. Siller/Silbermann in The Back of the Moon, minor characters inThe
Doubtful Asphodel), an “infinite regress” (a message perhaps encoded in
a wrongly addressed letter in Lost Property), or, more often, a
“mise-en-abyme” (as when elements of Success parallel V’s search).
In general, the “research theme” of Sebastian’s work (p. 104), which
extends to a novel about a dying man and an unfinished “fictitious
biography” (p. 40), is the theme of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
itself.
We concluded by glancing at the final paragraph, where V. first
proclaims that “any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its
undulations” (p. 204), and then, using the metaphor of a stage play,
recapitulates the plot of the book he has just written about Sebastian.
At the play’s end, however, V. can’t get out of his role. The final
sentence is divided into three parts, joined by the word “or,” and
suggesting at least three possible interpretations (or, in McHale’s
terms, multiple endings). The sentence’s first two parts suggest that
V.’s situation could be resolved by viewing one of the novel’s two
competing stories as the “real” one: thus, to paraphrase Mary Kate [a
student in the class], either “I” is really Sebastian, or else
“Sebastian” is really I. But the last part of the sentence adds a
third possibility: “or perhaps we are both someone whom neither of us
knows” (p. 205). In McHale’s terms, this is an instance of “characters
in search of an author”: V. suddenly realizes that he and Sebastian may
actually be literary characters. In that case, who is this “someone
else” who can be both of them, but whom neither of them knows? The
author of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight? or the reader of The Real
Life of Sebastian Knight? We’re back where we started!
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/