Creative Freedom in Nabby and the Pynch

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 2003-06-16 at 05:13, jbor wrote:
> on 16/6/03 4:42 AM, Otto wrote:
> 
> > "Novelists may wish to indulge the worst kinds of totalitarian whims
> > directed against the freedom of their characters. But often as not, they
> > scheme in vain, for characters always manage to evade one's all-seeing eye
> > long enough to think thoughts and utter dialogue one could never have come
> > up with if plot were all there were." (xxii)
> > 
> > versus
> > 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)
> 
> There's not really that much of a contrast here. Nabokov is specifically
> talking about characterisation as a component of the "private world" created
> by the author. Pynchon is addressing something else: the way that characters
> in fiction end up speaking and behaving in ways which are consistent with
> who they are, rather than conforming to a "message" or "meaning" which is a
> function of the "plot" decided on beforehand by the author. (There's a bit
> of a play on the dual meanings of the term "plot" here, and it's Pynchon's
> segue into a discussion of the complex and interesting characterisation of
> Julia in _1984_.) It also ties in with his comment in the _SL_ 'Intro' that
> it "is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying
> agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it." (p.12)
> 
> I don't think that Pynchon is arguing that characters "take hold" of the
> author or that they "dictate the course of the action" in a novel, and I
> think he would agree with Nabokov that "stability and truth", in terms of
> characterisation and human interactions, is one of the primary aims in the
> process of literary creation.


True.

Both authors are being semi-jocular in the way they extend the potential
for fascism to the domain of literary creation--Pynchon with "the worst
kind of totalitarian whim" and Nabokov with "perfect dictator."

P.