NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2

[Terrance]

 Writers, Nabokov
> teaches in his lectures, need a library, a cave, but they need, lest
> they start doing battle with windmills, to see the world, pluck its figs
> and peaches, and not keep constantly mediating in the tower of yellow
> ivory--which was also John Shade's mistake in a way.



  "The Art of Literature and Commonsense" 

Nabokov talks about being an author. 


  Nabokov says that an author should be a good mixer. But he must also
get
  an ivory tower, 

  "provided of course it has a telephone and an elevator just in case
one
  might like to dash out and buy the evening paper of have a friend come
  up for a game of chess, the latter being somehow suggested by the form
  and texture of one's carved abode. ... But before building oneself an
  ivory tower one must take the unavoidable trouble of killing quite a
few
  elephants. The fine specimen I intend to bag for the benefit of those
  who might like to see how it is done happens to be a rather incredible
  cross between and elephant and a horse. His name is common sense." 

  "Common sense is fundamentally immoral, for the natural morals of
  mankind are as irrational as the magic rites that they evolved since
the
  immemorial dimness of time."

  Elephant horse sense and magic. 

  "I am triumphantly mixing metaphors because that is exactly what they
  are intended for when they follow the course of their secret
  connections--which from a writer's point of view is the first positive
  result of the defeat of common sense." 

  "Two and two no longer make four, because it is no longer necessary
for
  them to make four. If they had done so in the artificial logical world
  we have left, it had been merely a matter of habit: two and two used
to
  make four in the same way as guests invited to dinner expect to make
an
  even number. But I invite my numbers to a giddy picnic and then nobody
  minds whether two and two make five or five minus some quaint
fraction." 

  
 
  In "AL&CS" Nabokov talks about why we read a book from left to right
and
  why writers write like painters paint, but of course we can't read
  novels in the same way that we read paintings. Or can we? 

  I read an article in the Financial Times other day about Michelangelo
Buonarroti and how one of his unfinished works was admired by Rodin. Got
me thinking about that unbuilt house that Mark mentioned and Timon. 

Why did Shakespeare leave Timon unfinished? 

What might it have been if had filled in the shadows and shades? 


Some say that Will want crazy writing this play and that he was
overwhlemed by what he was creating. Others say Will abandoned his
project because he was bored with it. 

Others say, and this seems to be the consensus these days, that Will
simply failed to make Timon into an acceptable tragic protagonist. 

Timon is a critic. While others play with toys and boys, Timon laughs at
them.