Salinger and Nabokov / Flaubert's Parrot
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Thu, 27 Aug 1998 22:06:23 +1000
> So, did Shade grant Kimbote immortality, or vice versa? Or
> could both be true, regardless of the "true" author? i think the latter
is
> true - mainly because Nabokov created both - like a set of mirrors
directly
> facing one another.
A perfect analogy (: It certainly lends a whole new dimension to Flaubert's
phrase - `The author must be like God in His universe; in everything but
appearing nowhere'. For where can the author hide in this hall of mirrors?
As soon as he believes he is concealed he catches sight of his arm or ear
or mind ....
> Take, for example, even the most trivial
> example - something like Star Wars - does the entire "Star Wars
> Universe" really come back to George Lucas? (God, I know I open myself
> to ridicule with that one.)
Not at all. I can see what you're getting at here, and it's a slightly
different thing to what I meant. I've always condoned the idea that a novel
or story or any piece of art is only a suggestion; a communication which is
transformed and interpreted differently by each and every reader. Thus my
Luke Skywalker is irrevocably different to yours. But it is interesting to
speculate on the idea of whose name will live on longer - Luke Skywalkers
or George Lucas'? And if the former is so, doesn't that mean the latter's
does by proxy?
Speaking of Flaubert (awhile back there) I've just been assigned
`Flaubert's Parrot' by Julian Barnes to study in my Postmodernism course. I
am quite amazed at the synchronicity it has with these things we've been
talking about in regards to S:AI and Pale Fire. There's even a name for
these texts in which one writer writes about another (fictional or real) -
Metatexts. I highly recommend any Salingerian to give it a good look,
because it encompasses a lot of the things we talk about in regards to
Salinger - how much or little should a writer be separated from his or her
text, the cult of the author, the death of the author, etc, etc ... Have
any of you bananafishers ever read it? It was extra good to read straight
after Seymour:An Introduction (I hadn't hunkered down with it for quite a
while and doing so really opened my mind a lot and made things I didn't
remember about it jump out at me)
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
THE INVERTED FOREST
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