Nabokovian Rules for writing

Precisión

Fidelidad artística

Nada de rellenos

Nada de imputaciones

_

 Vladimir Nabokov tuvo una vida muy interesante, hablaba muchos idiomas y no era la persona mas amigable del mundo. Un ejemplo es la entrevista que hizo a la revista Playboy en los 60s muestra el cuanto el juzgaba y criticaba los trabajos de los que eran considerados grandes escritores pero para el eran mediocres.

 Algunas partes de la entrevista que me hicieron reir:

Playboy: Is it true that you have called Hemingway and Conrad “writers of books for boys”?

Nabokov: That’s exactly what they are. Hemingway is certainly the better of the two; he has at least a voice of his own and is responsible for that delightful, highly artistic short story, The Killers. And the description of the fish in his famous fish story is superb. But I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir-shop style, and bottled ships, and shell necklaces of romanticist clichés. In neither of these two writers can I find anything that I would care to have written myself. In mentality and emotion, they are hopelessly juvenile, and the same can be said of some other beloved writers, the pets of the common room, the consolation and support of graduate students, such as—but some are still alive, and I hate to hurt living old boys while the dead ones are not yet buried.

En esa parte de la entrevista habla de nuestro querido Borges a quien admiraba:

Playboy: Are there any contemporary authors you do enjoy reading?

Nabokov: I do have a few favorites—for example, Robbe-Grillet and Borges. How freely and gratefully one breathes in their marvelous labyrinths! I love their lucidity of thought, the purity and poetry, the mirage in the mirror.

Referencias:

http://reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-vladimir-nabokov, 1964

Vladimir Nabokov Photo by_Philippe Halsman