Typed Slowly Treatment for Southern Culture Myopia.

The Worth of Art’s Evolution Leading to Its Abandonment

Nabokov's latest trick on academia

With Nabokov's unfinished, final novel, The Original Of Laura, finally being published next week, literary scholars and apprieciators are likely to be either defending the publication (which Nabokov explicitly opposed) or siding with Nabokov. As a fan of the few Nabokov novels I've read, I'll admit that I'm a little interested in taking a crack at the new "novel." However, I can't help but feel strange about reading what (I've heard) amounts to a rough draft outline of the novel knowing that Nabokov asked that it be destroyed if he died before he could finish it. But I can see obvious merits to both the defenders' and opposers' of publication points of view.

This Nabokovian controversy brings up an interesting (to me) question of whether or not the evolution of a work of art, be it notes for a novel, scratched out lyrics for a song, or storyboards or deleted scenes for a film, should be considered another part of the artwork or if the end result should have to stand all on its own.

In an article on Slate.com, Aleksandar Hemon argues against The Original Of Laura's publication, and he quotes Nabokov:

"An artist should ruthlessly destroy his manuscripts after publication, lest they mislead academic mediocrities into thinking that it is possible to unravel the mysteries of genius by studying cancelled readings. In art, purpose and plan are nothing; only the results count."

So Nabokov isn't much a fan of the academic literary unravelers/deconstructors. He's definitely not alone. Lucky for me, any analysis I make of literature might be a lot of things, but it sure as shit ain't academic.

While it would arguably be pretty interesting to know what might have been going on behind the scenes of Exile On Mainstreet's creation, or see some structural notes Wallace might have used when writing Infinite Jest (let's just see how many times I can reference that book on this blog), would/should it enhance or affect how we look at/read/consume the finished work of art?

(In observation of the (correct, I think) philosophy that a "work of art" is never finished but is instead only abandoned, we'll call what's been released or published the "finished work.")

To me, the short answer is no--what leads up to a finished work shouldn't be considered part of the work itself. False starts, rough drafts, deleted scenes, notes, and failed takes are sometimes interesting in and of themselves, but I don't see how they can logically be given enough weight as to affect the finished work in any meaningful way. Otherwise said notes would have been incorporated in the finished work, right? I'm obviously not much for the school of thought that art can take on different meanings, other than what the creator intended, after it's been released. Whatever Faulkner meant for us to get out of The Sound and the Fury, he included in the text, however confusing it might sometimes be. If I'm listening to Rage Against The Machine's self-titled record, I can't superimpose proletariat (forgive me the Marxism) ideals onto the lyrics that don't cohere with the politcal atmosphere of 1992. A work of art should exist only to the extent that it literally exists. Everything outside the work itself is out-of-bounds. Two-stroke penalty.

So, for me, Nabokov's new "novel" seems like it can be little more than a priviledged look at how one of the 20th century's most interesting writers got his shit together. Three-hundred pages of notecards is certainly not a novel, finished or otherwise. But in the end, I'm still wanting to read the damn thing, but then again, I'll read just about anything (emphasis on just about).

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