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Re: James is certainly not a Nabokovian writer ...
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Sandy Klein review by Denis Donoghue on James Woods' "How Fiction Works":[...] Many of Mr. Wood's own sentences are nearly as good, as in summing up a perceptive contrast between Nabokov and James in relation to detail seen, he writes: But James is certainly not a Nabokovian writer; his notion of what constitutes a detail is more various, more impalpable, and finally more metaphysical than Nabokov's. James would probably argue that while we should indeed try to be the kind of writer on whom nothing is lost, we have no need to be the kind of writer on whom everything is found.
J. Aisenberg: Nabokov and I often differ in literary opinions, but I'm on his side about Henry James[...] Too much James makes you want pull your hair out; Nabokov is a thousand times more economic as a writer, more truthful about his character's motivations, and a thousand times more imaginitive in his subject matter.[...] His "ambiguity" gives me a headache. Thank god Nabokov's not a Jamesian writer.
JM: The sentence that struck me, in the review was "we have no need to be the kind of writer on whom everything is found" related to VN, since one of the elements of VN's magic lies in how encompassing and "encompassionate" his is. Add to this his assertion the kind of writer on whom nothing is lost, applied to James ... It is quite untrue, unless foggy prolixity ( borrowing JA's adjectives) becomes a substitute for palpable loving attention to detail, as we find in Nabokov. Btw, although I could not locate it in SO, I remember that Nabokov actually praises, very economically, Henry James' "turn" of phrase ( I wish I could recollect his comment more precisely now.) I cannot see the point of comparing VN and Henry James in the way it seems to have been done.
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J. Aisenberg: Nabokov and I often differ in literary opinions, but I'm on his side about Henry James[...] Too much James makes you want pull your hair out; Nabokov is a thousand times more economic as a writer, more truthful about his character's motivations, and a thousand times more imaginitive in his subject matter.[...] His "ambiguity" gives me a headache. Thank god Nabokov's not a Jamesian writer.
JM: The sentence that struck me, in the review was "we have no need to be the kind of writer on whom everything is found" related to VN, since one of the elements of VN's magic lies in how encompassing and "encompassionate" his is. Add to this his assertion the kind of writer on whom nothing is lost, applied to James ... It is quite untrue, unless foggy prolixity ( borrowing JA's adjectives) becomes a substitute for palpable loving attention to detail, as we find in Nabokov. Btw, although I could not locate it in SO, I remember that Nabokov actually praises, very economically, Henry James' "turn" of phrase ( I wish I could recollect his comment more precisely now.) I cannot see the point of comparing VN and Henry James in the way it seems to have been done.
Search archive with Google:
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
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