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Anthony Burgess on Nabokov
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EDNOTE. Reactions?
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From interview with Anthony Burgess // Paris review. 1973. Vol.14. 56 (Spring), pp.119-163.
<p.143>
Has Nabokov influenced your work at all? You've praised "Lolita" highly.
Reading "Lolita" meant that I enjoyed using lists of things in the "Right to an Answer". I've not been much influenced by Nabokov, nor do I intend to be I was writing the way I write before I knew he existed. But I've not been impressed so much by another writer in the last decade or so.
Yet you've been called an "English Nabokov", probably because of the cosmopolitan strain and verbal ingenuity in your writing.
No influence. He's a Russian, I'm English. I meet him halfway in certain temperamental endowments. He's very artificial though.
<p.144>
In what way?
Nabokov is a natural dandy on the grand international scale. I'm still a provincial boy scared of being to nattily dressed. All writing is artificial and Nabokov's artifacts are only contrived in the récit part. His dialogue is always natural and masterly (when he wants it to be). "Pale Fire" is only termed a novel because there's no other term for it. It's a masterly literary artifact which is poem, commentary, casebook, allegory, sheer structure. But I note that most people go back to reading the poem, not what surrounds the poem. It's a fine poem, of course. Where Nabokov goes wrong, I think, is in sometimes sounding old-fashioned - a matter of rhythm, as thought Huysmans is to him a sound and modern writer whose tradition is worthy to be worked in. John Updike sounds old-fashioned sometimes in the same way - glorious vocabulary and imagery but a lack of muscle in the rhythm.
Does Nabokov rank at the top with Joyce?
He won't go down in history as one of the greatest names. He's unworthy to unlace Joyce's shoe.
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From interview with Anthony Burgess // Paris review. 1973. Vol.14. 56 (Spring), pp.119-163.
<p.143>
Has Nabokov influenced your work at all? You've praised "Lolita" highly.
Reading "Lolita" meant that I enjoyed using lists of things in the "Right to an Answer". I've not been much influenced by Nabokov, nor do I intend to be I was writing the way I write before I knew he existed. But I've not been impressed so much by another writer in the last decade or so.
Yet you've been called an "English Nabokov", probably because of the cosmopolitan strain and verbal ingenuity in your writing.
No influence. He's a Russian, I'm English. I meet him halfway in certain temperamental endowments. He's very artificial though.
<p.144>
In what way?
Nabokov is a natural dandy on the grand international scale. I'm still a provincial boy scared of being to nattily dressed. All writing is artificial and Nabokov's artifacts are only contrived in the récit part. His dialogue is always natural and masterly (when he wants it to be). "Pale Fire" is only termed a novel because there's no other term for it. It's a masterly literary artifact which is poem, commentary, casebook, allegory, sheer structure. But I note that most people go back to reading the poem, not what surrounds the poem. It's a fine poem, of course. Where Nabokov goes wrong, I think, is in sometimes sounding old-fashioned - a matter of rhythm, as thought Huysmans is to him a sound and modern writer whose tradition is worthy to be worked in. John Updike sounds old-fashioned sometimes in the same way - glorious vocabulary and imagery but a lack of muscle in the rhythm.
Does Nabokov rank at the top with Joyce?
He won't go down in history as one of the greatest names. He's unworthy to unlace Joyce's shoe.
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