The Recognitions

[alice wellintown]

There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered:
he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an
enchanter. A major writer combines these three — storyteller, teacher,
enchanter — but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes
him a major writer...The three facets of the great writer — magic,
story, lesson — are prone to blend in one impression of unified and
unique radiance, since the magic of art may be present in the very
bones of the story, in the very marrow of thought...Then with a
pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual we shall watch the
artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become
a castle of beautiful steel and glass."
— Vladimir Nabokov

> I guess my remark ended up being just as ironical as the two that preceded
> it.  I thought I was being serious but the best laid plans . . .  It now
> seems to me impossible to say what makes a good novel.  By any up to date
> aesthetic theory it must be pleasurable on the conscious level but there
> must be something below the surface that hurts and strips us bare. It must
> partake of the sublime.