Stephen Blackwell’s Topic #2 below is even stronger than he writes here (although I am sure he is perfectly aware).  “The tradition of spinning a yarn from someone else’s” goes back much, much further: that‘s what Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, just to name the giants of English literature, do.  And did Sophocles invent Oedipus?  Jean Rhys and Charlotte Brontë?  Indeed, the idea that writers, and other artists, are to value originality above all else is a Romantic notion, a break from most prior creation.  So it seems to me that what Moore has done is both perfectly traditional and just-about normal; and by titling her piece “Referential” she is honestly acknowledging her more than allusive indebtedness.

Whether “Referential” can stand on its own without thinking of “Signs and Symbols” is a much trickier question (Blackwell’s Topic #4).  In my own specialty, for example, I am quite happy to apprehend and appreciate Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde without “Referential[ity]” to Boccaccio (although I have read the Boccaccio [in translation] as part of academic research).   But I can’t read or see a performance of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida without automatically referencing it to both Chaucer and Virgil.  Whether Moore is doing reconstruction or deconstruction—and I mean “construction” as the noun form of both “construct” and “construe”—is a topic well worth considering.

 

 

 

A few thoughts on homages, tributes, adaptations, take-offs, and the like:

I am really not much of a fan of the art of the review.  It's a bias I have.  For me, the perfect and complete content of an artistic or literary review would be either: a) must see (read); b) maybe skip, or not;  or c) silence.

In her interview with Deborah Treisman, Lorrie Moore makes it extremely clear that her intent with this story was to pay an open homage to Nabokov, for those who can recognize it.  I'll discuss those who can't recognize it in a moment.

Seems to me there are a few different topics worth considering.

1. The story's merits, as a piece of literary art and as homage:  I'm surprised that some are offended that the story is not as good as VN's original.  Moore calls "Signs and Symbols" "perfect" and Nabokov "unparalleled." She does not seem to have pretenses that she is on Nabokov's level.  I felt that some of her original formulations and images were exquisite in their own right, while some others were a bit flat. On the whole, flashes of verbal brilliance, I thought, but not really close to Nabokov's level.  I don't think that's surprising or necessarily bad (that the New Yorker should publish lesser fiction than VN's).  How many living authors are there who write at that level?  I have no idea, but I would bet, in English, it is between zero and three.  Other, more mortal voices can also produce things of beauty and worthy of attention.  As someone with knowledge of the original, I felt that I was being asked specifically to re-appreciate that story, and to consider its translation into slightly different contexts, with one example provided.  I don't feel like or have time for enumerating its specific strengths (which would be worth doing) or weaknesses (probably not worth doing), but I did feel that the story has its own legitimacy, its own coherence, and its own set of concerns, separate from VN's, but always acknowledging his presence.  On the whole, a worthwhile read.  (I think any "adaptation"--including, especially, film--is always very hard to take for a true devotee of the original; it is nearly impossible to suspend one's devotion, I think.  Whatever its merits, the Marleen Gorris Luzhin Defense drives me nuts with its departures). 

2. Tradition: the tradition of spinning a yarn from someone else's is a long one.  Recent examples include Roger's Version by John Updike (after The Scarlet Letter), and in some respects Lolita itself, although Nabokov both hid his sources more deeply and expanded upon them more exuberantly than is typical in this particular tradition.  Matei Calinescu discusses Updike's multiple approaches to Hawthorne in his article "Secrecy in Fiction: Textual and Intertextual Secrets in Hawthorne and Updike" Poetics Today, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 443-465; Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773318, as an example of "rereading for the secret," but also as a call to reread Hawthorne.  Significantly to the present discussion, Calinescu reports that Updike's acknowledgments of his source are in out-of-the-way paratexts, and are not (or at least were not, for several years) included in mass-market editions of Roger's Version.

3. "Genius has only itself to copy," VN said in response to a comment by Clarence Brown.  Gogol, legend has it (as Gogol himself reported), got his plot-problems for Dead Souls and The Government Inspector from Pushkin.   Perhaps Despair's Ardalion is our best guide here: maybe finding what is unique, new, and worthy of attention in Moore's story (what makes it different from Nabokov's, rather than its [convincing or unconvincing] similarities) is the most enriching task.  And then, I'm sure Moore would suggest, we should reread the original.

4. What about the reader who doesn't recognize or know Nabokov's story behind Moore's?  Let's imagine such a reader, or maybe two such readers.  Reader A, quickly disposed of, reads the story, has little reaction to it, soon forgets it and moves on.  Reader B loves the story, rereads it, but forgets to follow up on the New Yorker web site to learn that it is based on Nabokov.  This reader mentions the story to a few friends, or seeks out more information about the author, and one way or another learns about "Signs and Symbols," and, perhaps, the whole world of Nabokov's short-story writing. Curiosity does its job and is rewarded. 



The interview with the author is here:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/this-week-in-fiction-lorrie-moore.html#entry-more

There are currently 11 comments following the interview.

Stephen Blackwell

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