We may go to the teacher not only for moral education but also for direct knowledge, for simple fact. Propagandist, moralist, prophet-this is the rising sequence. A slightly different though not necessarily higher mind looks for the teacher in the writer. To the storyteller we turn for entertainment, for mental excitement of the simplest kind, for emotional participation, for the pleasure of traveling in some remote region in space or time. A major writer combines these three-storyteller, teacher, enchanter-but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer. 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. –from Nabokov’s lecture “The Art of Literature and Common Sense”īe storyteller, teacher, and (most importantly) enchanter. But in one way or another the process may still be reduced to the most natural form of creative thrill-a sudden, live image constructed in a flash out of dissimilar units which are apprehended all at once in a stellar explosion of the mind.
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The initial urge may disclose as many aspects as there are temperaments and talents it may be the accumulated series of several practically unconscious shocks or it may be an inspired combination of several abstract ideas without a definite physical background. The writer of fiction only follows Nature’s lead.Īlthough to develop in one’s self the art of forming sudden harmonious patterns out of widely separate threads is never to be despised, and although, as in Marcel Proust’s case, the actual idea of a novel may spring from such actual sensations as the melting of a biscuit on the tongue or the roughness of a pavement underfoot, it would be rash to conclude that the creation of all novels ought to be based on a kind of glorified physical experience. From the simple deception of propagation to the prodigiously sophisticated illusion of protective colors in butterflies or birds, there is in Nature a marvelous system of spells and wiles.
Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. –from Nabokov’s 1948 lecture “Good Readers and Good Writers” The material of this world may be real enough (as far as reality goes_ but does not exist at all as an accepted entirety: it is chaos, and to this chaos the author says “go!” allowing the world to flicker and fuse. The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction. –from Nabokov’s interview with Hebert Gold, published in the Summer/Fall 1967 issue of The Paris Review –from an interview with Alvin Toffler, published in Playboy, January 1964
Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child’s scrawl on the fence, and the crank’s message in the market place. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world.
If you have, too, here’s a collection of some of his best writing advice to help you get a little closer (though honestly, he would hate this), plucked from lectures and interviews.Ī creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. Personally, I’ve already sentenced myself to a lifetime of sucking up. Well, I get why you shouldn’t-but how could you not? Vladimir Nabokov is probably the best constructor of sentences I’ve ever read our most word-drunk writer, our most deliriously beautiful snob.
It contains mostly good advice, but I’m afraid I can’t quite get behind #3, despite its obvious utility: “Don’t be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov,” Dyer says. Ten years ago, Geoff Dyer compiled a list of advice for aspiring writers.
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