pontalba said:
While searching for something else, I ran across this little bit from Boyd on The Enchanter...
Well we do know that VN collaborated with Dimitri in the translation, so it wasn't as though they waited until after he died. It was with his blessing.
And for Boyd to call it a failure is a bit strong as far as I am concerned. It was much more than a precursor.
Pontalba,
That's a wonderful find, and so thought-provoking, because apart from Boyd's opinions it shows an expert's view of what it takes to make a story "go" and to "succeed." To me success and failure are very relative concepts. Much easier are "like" and "don't like," which I realize are totally personal reactions and can have little to do with "merit," or in the case of Boyd's comments, "success" or "failure" of a work.
Boyd believes, on the one hand, that Nabokov failed to vivify the "unrealized world" of the story. Maybe through his eyes, Nabokov didn't. But it was vivified enough for me to find it very enjoyable, with many details to admire and many wonderful interactions to read about between the characters, who themselves were real as real could be for me. I hate to think of what Boyd's opinion would be of other books I read where
even I would claim their worlds were not vivified and interestingly realized and that the characters are conventional. Oy! It splits my head to contemplate. Maybe Nabokov didn't come up to Boyd's technical writerly standards for literary success in the construction and creation of the novel and its world, -- or maybe even up to Nabokov's own standards, as Boyd suggests -- but Nabokov more than satisfied
my readerly standards for appreciating and enjoying
The Enchanter! The ending alone lifts it way above the ordinary for me, in addition to the ear-splitting scream, the girl's mother, the guy's slick and oily ways, the zero-length courtship, the scenes in the park, the girl tying her shoelace, simply the descriptions of the girl skipping, and skating back and forth, and waiting her turn in line for jump-rope. If that novel was a "miss" then for me it was such a near-miss for the difference not make any difference.
OTOH Boyd lists what it does really take to make a novel as great as
Lolita, and there is no doubt that Lolita succeeded by anyone's standards.
So Boyd's views were definitely very informative and insightful and educational for me, and may well help me better appreciate good writing. But I sure hope they don't interfere with the writing that I already enjoy, and I'm going to resist to the bitter end. Boyd or no Boyd.
Peder the Combative
