Re: IVIV (15) 273—7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38

[Keith]

In John Banville's bookforum review of Nabokov's The Original of  
Laura, http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/016_04/4671 he calls VN's  
1936 short story, Spring in Fialta, a masterpiece. In reading it this  
morning, I came across this gem from the lips of Victor, the story's  
narrator:

"Now, frankly speaking, I have always been irritated by the  
complacent conviction that a ripple of stream of consciousness, a few  
healthy obscenities, and a dash of communism in any old slop pail  
will alchemically and automatically produce ultramodern literature;  
and I will contend until I am shot that art as soon as it is brought  
into contact with politics inevitably sinks to the level of any  
ideological trash."