RealityStudio.org

I think that is utterly disgusting, and seems done for money. If a writer asks that his work be destroyed after his death, IT SHOULD BE. I love how they say that he never referred to it as a work really that should be destroyed; any writer keeps all his irons in the fire and can refer to any of his works up until the point when he can write no more. Then his wishes should be respected and his unfinished work should die with him. Index cards? Gimme a break. Who knows what form a novel could take from index card to the page? Ridiculous.



Here's a bit from a P.J. O'Rourke interview with Hunter S Thompson from Rolling Stone many moons ago discussing Nabokov and his artistic methodology (O'Rourke first, obviously):

Are there any writers who you think do it effectively, honestly, dirtily? And honestly.

Well, I think that Nabokov could.

A beautiful writer.

Hell of a good writer. A friend of mine, Mike Solheim, was up in Sun Valley [Idaho] back in the early '60s. He told me that Nabokov used to come to the Sun Valley Lodge with an 11-year-old girl. He said it was weirder than Lolita: "It's very nice to meet your niece, Mr. Nabokov." Well, that goes back to the new-journalism question, about writing from experience.

When you read it, you knew this was from real experience. This was not Thomas Mann writing Death in Venice, which seemed to be a student's idea of what a hopeless crush would be, as if he'd observed someone go through it.

And the reason for that is, Nabokov was up at Sun Valley Lodge with an 11-year-old girl.

I'm afraid Lolita strictly fits into the gonzo framework.

But, man, that's where the fun is. You know, why write about other people's experiences?



Ummm...yep. Whatever. Here's the full interview (which is about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) for any of you interested) the above quote is taken from:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ ... hing_at_25

I dont think it's as clear cut as that. There's always something sketchy about a writer's wish to burn their work after their death. I think we had this discussion elsewhere on the forum re:Hippo's, Brod's rationalization and whether or not writers really want their work destroyed.

Though I see no harm in publishing the manuscript, as long as there's a lengthy preface/disclaimer about the shape of the manuscript and the editor's choices. This way people know going in, that this is no magnum opus or concluding statement upon a life's work.

Diaries, notebooks and correspondence are a bit tricky, since that could reveal personal information that could seriously diminish the public appreciation of the author's work. Sort of like the first edition of The Will to Power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_t ... manuscript)) or Joyce's shit letters (http://www.johnhamilton.us/2/jamesjoyceletters.htm).

i don't have any strong opinions one way or the other, but i think when a writer really wants something destroyed, it is destroyed. remember burroughs talking about throwing away thousands of pages?
burroughs also stated that a writer a lot of times is the poorest critic of his own work. i do know that i'll be reading this book, and if it's half as good as LOLITA i will be a happy reader.

That would mean that we'd have to destroy nearly everything that Kafka ever wrote.

You're right that this Nabokov enterprise is probably commercially driven, but if we followed the capricious wishes of every artist who wanted to hide his work, the world would be a poorer place.

Writers forget that at some point they become something away from themselves. They get on the TMZ of the Lit scene and Nabakov did that. Sorry if your work is so appreciated that people want to keep publishing even the stuff you say to throw out...

I just skim-read the Joyce letters (am still chuckling) and I can't say my image of the man has been compromised any. Can you tell he's Catholic? (Chuckle) I think these things are poignant, private, perverted-and-proud...and probably shouldn't have been published. Stuff like '...hear and smell the dirty fat girlish farts going pop pop out of your pretty bare girlish bum..." I find absolutely (arse) fucking hilarious. I never knew James Joyce, Irish wordplayboy genius of the 20th century, was a fart-fuck-fetishist! But you know, this only humanizes him even more for me. He was just a man, lusting after his wife's farts and pussy and dirty underwear. So what? What kind of prude doesn't recognize elements of aberrant-to-somebody-else (you're only a sexual sicko if your pathology doesn't match my pathology) sexuality in all of us? Some of us are probably into far worse; there's an almost sweet naive innocence about the letters. But I'm sure the dead couple would be mortified if they knew their private erotica was being looked at - even more mortified to know it was being laughed at. But they were freely allowing their erotic imaginations to go where they wanted for their private arousal, never knowing they would be judged and categorized and psychologically analyzed, and I can't say I see anything wrong in just allowing the mind to roam free and say whatever literally comes to mind; that should be the essence of writing, after all. I can't see how publishing this stuff has particularly helped the Joyce canon or legacy, I must say, but, once again...so what? I guess the letters would have been graphic in 1909, but now they're pretty tame, Penthouse magazine letters page stuff. So he liked it when the his classy-chassis lass passed ass gas. So what. We're animals, we smell, we fuck, we dwell on fetishistic details.

Let's move on.

it doesn't sound good folks.

Dmitri Nabokov’s Little Con
http://www.vqronline.org/blog/2009/12/0 ... -of-laura/

just watched bbc4 documentary on VL "how do you solve a problem like lolita?" (stephen smith)..whilst it was nice to see so many sights, i thought it was poor..in my opinion...it should be on the bbc's internet service, so check it out...have only read L, Despair and Bend sinister..so can only say that someone writing about love is more preferable to the macho pornography of hemmingwank et al. ahem.

interview in the paris review: 1967
http://www.theparisreview.org/interview ... ir-nabokov