Monday 24 November 2014

Discovering Nabokov.

I’ve spent the evenings over the last few winters catching up on some of the modern and not-so-modern literary classics that I missed while I was still dreaming about Rupert Bear and Tiger Lily. (What a splendid couple they made – no agendas, you see. No tensions. I was always suspicious of relationships with agendas, and it seemed to me that life carried enough tensions in the here and now without adding to its often ponderous weight by reading about somebody else’s fictional ones.)

But then I spent nine years writing my own fiction, and over those nine years I developed my own style and learned a lot about how to put words together in a way that makes them worth reading. It didn’t make me a good writer, but it gave me a much better understanding of those who were. It’s what makes me feel modestly qualified to be critical – both positively and negatively – of other people’s efforts, and to feel reasonably free to differentiate between the good, the populist but passable, and the never-mind-the-quality-feel-the-width stuff like The Duh Vinci Code.

This evening I started reading Nabokov’s Lolita. So far I’ve only read about Lolita’s predecessor-by-twenty-four-years, Annabelle, but it has me well engaged. The narrative is complex yet direct, the observations keen yet perfunctory in expression, the style lyrical yet terse. The words are simple, but the meanings have to be thought about. (And that ultimate preposition was deliberate.) It reminds me a little of somebody idly throwing best caviar to feral pigeons while musing on the odd sight of a smooth column topped by a Corinthian capital. Alternatively, imagine a basketball player sitting on the edge of the court eating a sandwich and reading a newspaper. He lobs the ball casually over his shoulder and it lands dead centre in the basket.

I’ll bet you couldn’t do that again. I’ll bet he could.

I think of literature as having three characteristics – form, style and content. Form is of no concern to me, being mostly the plaything of the academic. Style and content matter to me, and in this case they’re not only both superb, they also match one another perfectly. I’ll let you know if I change my mind.

5 comments:

Madeline said...

I read Lolita when I was 17. I should probably read it again - I'm sure there are aspects that I didn't pick up on the first time around, much like when I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when I was 12 and took the entire contents literally. By 17 I had learned the concept of the unreliable narrator but there are probably still things that I missed in Lolita. I also wasn't aware at the time that I read it that it was based on a true story.

I remember I was also a big fan of Nabokov's style. And of course I always love reading fiction from the point of view of a truly despicable person. I'm looking forward to winter break when I can actually read literature again.

Madeline said...

By the way if you aren't familiar with the true story Lolita is based on, I suggest you don't look it up until you've finished the book, because it gives away parts of the ending.

JJ said...

Yet again you embarrass me with your superior erudition. I didn’t know there was any such thing as an unreliable narrator. And then the remark about a ‘truly despicable person’ confuses me. The context suggests that brand of Maddiesque humour which I find quite remarkable in one so far away, but how can I know? You see, I know Lolita only through reputation, and I always thought the male protagonist was a tortured victim of a young but naturally skilled femme fatale. Now I want to read it all the more. And I promise myself I won’t read the true story before I finish. Thanks for the heads up. I never read the introduction to novels for that very reason.

Good to see you, Mad. It is. I was worried that the snow might have risen higher than your ears.

Incidentally, your Mr Dog videos appear to be missing from YouTube.

Madeline said...

The snow is rising, but I'm keeping ahead of it! I don't know what happened to the videos of Mr. Dog - perhaps removed due to copyright restriction on the music? I will take a look.

I don't think I can elaborate on my judgment of HH without spoiling things, but you should probably take everything he says with a grain of salt. There's a reason why the book isn't from the point of view of Lolita (which isn't even her real name).

JJ said...

The reason I thought Mr Dog had been taken down is a bit too convoluted to explain. Suffice it to say that I found them again by accident and realised that the search term I used hadn't been sufficiently precise.

You have me truly intrigued. But then, so does Mr H so far.