Subject
TT-4 Answer to Mary Krimmel (fwd)
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EDNOTE. Be it noted that Sandy Drescher knows whereof he speaks.
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Thursday, July 15, 2004 4:10 PM -0400
From: Alexander Drescher <bunsan@direcway.com>
To: nabokv-l@listserv.ucsb.edu
Subject: TT-4 Answer to Mary Krimmel
Mary Kimmel [Thank you for the kindness of your reply] and List-
Sandy Drescher: 4] How is the reader to understand characters who seem to be
entirely certain of what they think and feel? How believable is a human
free of ambivalence?
Mary Kimmel Which characters are you thinking of?
Sandy D: 1] Hugh Person is presented as caring nothing for his father, and
as
totally accepting and enchanted by the icy, rather brutal Armande. [Put
aside that: 1- harm is carefully avoided in deep, somnambulistic sleep, and
2- total muscular paralysis accompanies REM sleep - the reported dream has
the clarity and associational quality of REM dreaming]. Still, granting the
possibility of the murder, Hugh and the author forbid the reader to
question whether, at times, Hugh may have had hateful as well as loving
feelings towards Armande, or whether in retrospect he wondered about this
himself. One need not be a Freudian to recognize that humans hold
conflicting thoughts, wishes and feeling simultaneously. As noted, theres
the rub.
2] Armande is one among several other enchantresses whose behavior is
completely inexplicable to the other characters and this reader [as in
RLSK, SIF, TIAO]. Their attractions for the protagonists is also beyond
explanation, other than the readers projection of similar life experience.
S: Is there a character in TT who seems human enough for the reader to like?
M: It seems to me that in general unlikable characters and unlikable
people are as human as likable ones.
S: With very few exceptions, ..unlikable PEOPLE are as human as likable
ones and I agree that the effort to find something likable, or tragic, or
poorly understood is a noble step towards acceptance or even liking. But
a fictional CHARACTER may be drawn so lacking in human traits as to fail to
arouse affective responses. As I tend to be perversely fond of villains
and schlimazels, my choice of the word like was poor; better said,
neither Hugh nor Armande come sufficiently alive for me, for me to care. As
Nabokov could breath life into the most bizarre characters and from wildly
disorienting points of view, this deadness in TT seems remarkable. Is it a
consequence of the explanatory omniscience of the narrators and the lack of
human doubt in the characters?
-Sandy Drescher
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Thursday, July 15, 2004 4:10 PM -0400
From: Alexander Drescher <bunsan@direcway.com>
To: nabokv-l@listserv.ucsb.edu
Subject: TT-4 Answer to Mary Krimmel
Mary Kimmel [Thank you for the kindness of your reply] and List-
Sandy Drescher: 4] How is the reader to understand characters who seem to be
entirely certain of what they think and feel? How believable is a human
free of ambivalence?
Mary Kimmel Which characters are you thinking of?
Sandy D: 1] Hugh Person is presented as caring nothing for his father, and
as
totally accepting and enchanted by the icy, rather brutal Armande. [Put
aside that: 1- harm is carefully avoided in deep, somnambulistic sleep, and
2- total muscular paralysis accompanies REM sleep - the reported dream has
the clarity and associational quality of REM dreaming]. Still, granting the
possibility of the murder, Hugh and the author forbid the reader to
question whether, at times, Hugh may have had hateful as well as loving
feelings towards Armande, or whether in retrospect he wondered about this
himself. One need not be a Freudian to recognize that humans hold
conflicting thoughts, wishes and feeling simultaneously. As noted, theres
the rub.
2] Armande is one among several other enchantresses whose behavior is
completely inexplicable to the other characters and this reader [as in
RLSK, SIF, TIAO]. Their attractions for the protagonists is also beyond
explanation, other than the readers projection of similar life experience.
S: Is there a character in TT who seems human enough for the reader to like?
M: It seems to me that in general unlikable characters and unlikable
people are as human as likable ones.
S: With very few exceptions, ..unlikable PEOPLE are as human as likable
ones and I agree that the effort to find something likable, or tragic, or
poorly understood is a noble step towards acceptance or even liking. But
a fictional CHARACTER may be drawn so lacking in human traits as to fail to
arouse affective responses. As I tend to be perversely fond of villains
and schlimazels, my choice of the word like was poor; better said,
neither Hugh nor Armande come sufficiently alive for me, for me to care. As
Nabokov could breath life into the most bizarre characters and from wildly
disorienting points of view, this deadness in TT seems remarkable. Is it a
consequence of the explanatory omniscience of the narrators and the lack of
human doubt in the characters?
-Sandy Drescher
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L