Monday, December 7, 2009

quick notes on Christina's & Riley's

I am at work right now so I don't really have time to expand on this idea, but hearing/ reading Riley's as well as Christina's I've been thinking a lot about this web of interconectivity within Nabokov's writing. Riley said that he had to punch out his cards -something i was overly cautious not to do with my library copy (library copy should be laminated)- but the idea, or the spatial recognition of having the cards spread out in front of you is really appealing to me. This would be an enormous project for the entire work of something like Lolita, but to see the entire script as an image, a piece of art, possibly with the silks of web spread and tied throughout the text would be, if at all possible one of the coolest things for this class (future MoMA exhibit)
Again, i wish i had time to articulate this point/idea more and give it some elan of it's own but I am just working with the raw idea that Nabokovs work is limited almost when we are given it in the "linear" fashion to which print is confined, we must in turn think and feel out the works. (which we have no problem doing) but to see this confinement broken would be beautiful. As Christina puts it in her paper, "Unlike ordinary writers, however, who may use words to illustrate concepts in a linear fashion (from word to idea), Nabokov manipulates words in a very different way, making them come alive through their varied interactions with one another."
I enthusiastically agree here, but my point is that in the novel form, we are quite literally restrained to the linear form, i just want to see what the image of it would be spatially... this sounds crazy i know, i suppose i don't really know what i'm talking about anymore, i think this semester has cracked me, but just picture it, maybe even try it. push out the note cards in your copy of The Original of Laura. tear the pages out of an old copy of Pale Fire
and Draw a 'web of sense' throughout. see what it looks like.

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