Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022251, Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:36:09 -0200

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[NABOKOV-L] [THOUGHTS] Writer's passports
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Nabokov stated that "the nationality of a worthwhile writer is of secondary importance [.]. The writer's art is his real passport. His identity should be immediately recognized by a special pattern or unique coloration" (Strong Opinions, 63)..."I am bored by writers who join the social-comment racket. I despise the corny Philistine fad of flaunting four-letter words. I also refuse to find merit in a novel just because it is by a brave Black in Africa or a brave White in Russia - or by any representative of any single group in America. Frankly, a national, folklore, class, masonic, religious, or any other communal aura involuntarily prejudices me against a novel, making it harder for me to peel the offered fruit so as to get at the nectar of possible talent" (Strong Opinions, 113)*

An international writer's passport, as entertained by Nabokov, is obviously not expressive of any paperwork that is addressed to immigration officers. However, I was surprised that Nabokov's passport isn't applicable everywhere among the various schools of art criticism.
While I was going through old magazines that I needed to trash, I found one about American XXth Century literature from the perspective of Brazilian Art- criticism: "A Literatura Norte-Americana do Século 20" (Cult, n.35, Ano 12). It was divided into four sections: (1)Formative Years;(2) Post-war prose; (3) Poetry, its icons and movements;(4) A brief panorama of theatrical prose-writing. It starts by mentioning Ralph Elisson and Sherwood Anderson, before it moves to the three greats, Faulkner, Hemmingway and Fitzgerald, and then goes back to Raymond Carver, Carson McCullers, J.D.Salinger. In the second chapter, Kurt Vonnegut, Jerzy Kosinki, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Ken Keysey are mentioned together with Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Joseph Heller, before considering Conte's "fabrication of chaos" with John Barth, Barthelme, Sorrentino, Don deLillo, Robert Coover and Pynchon. Next are the poets (Pound, Eliot, Williams Carlos Williams...Rothemberg, Bernstein), aso usw, etc and Vladimir Nabokov's name isn't mentioned anywhere among those American authors who (as I surmise) speak to an unspecified group of Brazilian scholars.

The absence of Nabokov's name from this particular group is not only a matter of "great art" versus something else, or only a consequence of conflicting literary schools, philosophical or political postures. I used to thrive by conjectures that were similar to Nabokov's "transcendent perspective" (G.Green) and closed my eyes to any discrepant proposals and yet...it just occurred to me that, unawares, I always preferred Kinbote's truly "a chaotic" position to Shade's staid sentimentality and madness.



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*Quotes copied from:
Beyond Modernism and Postmodernism: Vladimir Nabokov's Fiction ...
revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1473 -
excerpt from first paragraph by Geoffrey Green ( in "Beyond Modernism and Postmodernism: Vladimir Nabokov's Fiction of Transcendent Perspective") who argues that only "on a secondary basis is it useful to observe the proximate affiliation or affinity (from an historical perspective) that might shed additional insight or illumination on the achievement of the artist...From our contemporary vantage point, obsessed with "difference," it is refreshing to appreciate Nabokov's insistence on a shared literary apperception: that great art may move and affect deeply responsive readers across culture, across gender, and across social and historical boundaries."

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