Creative Freedom in Nabby and the Pynch

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

Quite interesting, and taken out of context, here, make
the old fellow seem rather cranky. In any comparison
between Pynchon and Nabokov regarding "Creative Freedom"
it would seem that Nabokov is at a disadvantage because
he has spoken publicly so much, and these words can be
twisted. I will try to return to this topic as the reading
progresses, and attempt, along the way, to thread it into
the discussion of the works themselves. It will keep me
focused. As a starting point I might suggest that the idea
of one of his fictional works being attacked by "larvae and
rust" contrary to the fears of Nabokov, might seem rather
liberating- in some ways- to Pynchon, albeit, after it has
been thoroughly digested by his audience.

respectfully

In a message dated 6/15/03 8:14:06 AM, jasper at hatguild.org writes:

<< Nabokov, From an interview with Alfred Appel, Jr., "Wisconsin Studies in
Contemporary Literature", vol. XVIII, no. 2, 1967, reprinted in _Strong
Opinions_.

"Appel: One often hears from writers talk of how a character takes hold
of them and in a sense dictates the course of the action.  Has this ever
been your experience?

VN: I have never experienced this.  What a preposterous experience!
Writers who have had it must be very minor or insane.  No, the design of
my novel is fixed in my imagination and every character follows the
course I imagine for him.  I am the perfect dictator in that private
world insofar as I alone am responsible for its stability and truth.
Whether I reproduce is as fully and faithfully as I would wish, is
another question.  Some of my old works reveal dismal blurrings and
blanks." (p 69)

>From an interview with Alvin Toffler in Playboy, Jan, 1964:

"Toffler: A contribution to society?

VN: A work of art has no importance whatever to society.  It is only
important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important
to me.  I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses,
and so forth.  Although I do not care for the slogan 'art for art's
sake' -- because unfortunately such promoters of it as, for instance,
Oscar Wilde and various dainty poets, were in reality rank moralists and
didacticists -- there can be no question that what makes a work of
fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its
art, only its art." (p 33)

>From the same interview:

"Toffler: What is your reaction to the mixed feelings vented by one
critic in a review which characterized you as having a fine and original
mind, but 'not much trace of a generalizing intellect,' and as 'the
typical artist who distrusts ideas'?"

VN: [...] The middlebrow or the upper Philistine cannot get rid of the
furtive feeling that a book, to be great, must deal in great ideas.  Oh,
I know the type, the dreary type!  He likes a good yarn spiced with
social comment; he likes to recognize his own thoughts and throws in
those of the author; he wants at least one of the characters to be the
author's stooge.  If American, he has a dash of Marxist blood, and if
British, he is acutely and ridiculously class-conscious; he finds it so
much easier to write about ideas than about words; he does not realize
that perhaps the reason he does not find general ideas in a particular
writer is that the particular ideas of that writer have not yet become
general." (p 41)


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