Subject
Flaubertians like Joyce and Nabokov outdid themselves . . .
From
Date
Body
[EDNOTE. Jim Twiggs sends this letter, by Morris Dickstein, from last
Sunday's New York Times Book
Review. -- SES]
NEW YORK TIMES Sunday Book Review
LETTERS
The House of Fiction
To the Editor:
I very much appreciated James Wood's insightful
account of Flaubert's technique (April 16), as I
always enjoy his fine essays. But does Flaubert's
impersonal narrative manner, with its camera eye for
visual detail, really make him "the originator of the
modern novel"? There's no question of his influence,
but Flaubert's ambition to write "a book about
nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which
would be held together by the strength of its style,"
is scarcely typical of novelists of any era. His
obsession with form, with finding le mot juste, drove
the author to frenzies of self-flagellating,
lifedenying effort, and it would prove sterile to the
few who tried to emulate it. Tolerant of
inconsistency, the best novelists have always remained
more open to memory and experience. Flaubertians like
Joyce and Nabokov outdid themselves and transcended
their concern with style when they found real
subjects, as Flaubert himself did only in "Madame
Bovary" and "Sentimental Education. [. . .]
Here's the link to the rest of the letter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/books/review/07mail.html
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Sunday's New York Times Book
Review. -- SES]
NEW YORK TIMES Sunday Book Review
LETTERS
The House of Fiction
To the Editor:
I very much appreciated James Wood's insightful
account of Flaubert's technique (April 16), as I
always enjoy his fine essays. But does Flaubert's
impersonal narrative manner, with its camera eye for
visual detail, really make him "the originator of the
modern novel"? There's no question of his influence,
but Flaubert's ambition to write "a book about
nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which
would be held together by the strength of its style,"
is scarcely typical of novelists of any era. His
obsession with form, with finding le mot juste, drove
the author to frenzies of self-flagellating,
lifedenying effort, and it would prove sterile to the
few who tried to emulate it. Tolerant of
inconsistency, the best novelists have always remained
more open to memory and experience. Flaubertians like
Joyce and Nabokov outdid themselves and transcended
their concern with style when they found real
subjects, as Flaubert himself did only in "Madame
Bovary" and "Sentimental Education. [. . .]
Here's the link to the rest of the letter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/books/review/07mail.html
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm