![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Dec. 9th, 2014
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
INTERVIEWER
You were an editor for a long time, weren’t you? What is the relationship between that and the craft of writing?
DOCTOROW
Editing taught me how to break books down and put them back together. You learn values—the value of tension, of keeping tension on the page and how that’s done, and you learn how to spot self-indulgence, how you don’t need it. You learn how to become very free and easy about moving things around, which a reader would never do. A reader sees a printed book and that’s it. But when you see a manuscript as an editor, you say, Well this is chapter twenty, but it should be chapter three. You’re at ease in the book the way a surgeon is at ease in a human chest, with all the blood and the guts and everything. You’re familiar with the material and you can toss it around and say dirty things to the nurse.
-- E. L. Doctorow at The Paris Review
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
INTERVIEWER
You were an editor for a long time, weren’t you? What is the relationship between that and the craft of writing?
DOCTOROW
Editing taught me how to break books down and put them back together. You learn values—the value of tension, of keeping tension on the page and how that’s done, and you learn how to spot self-indulgence, how you don’t need it. You learn how to become very free and easy about moving things around, which a reader would never do. A reader sees a printed book and that’s it. But when you see a manuscript as an editor, you say, Well this is chapter twenty, but it should be chapter three. You’re at ease in the book the way a surgeon is at ease in a human chest, with all the blood and the guts and everything. You’re familiar with the material and you can toss it around and say dirty things to the nurse.
-- E. L. Doctorow at The Paris Review
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
People were right about Netflix. I am starting to become a daily movie watcher. I have watched "Jailbait" and "Lovelace" under the regular subscription fee. On Amazon, I was close to coughing up the few extra dollars to rent the viewing rights to those movies, on top of the annual membership fee. We are practically drowning in movies now. On the other hand, it has only been a couple of days, and one wonders if this happy tune will change in another few months, after we have gone through their stock. For now, I am busily streaming through the series "House of Cards". Merry Christmas!
Vladimir Nabokov
Dec. 9th, 2014 08:39 pm<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Born in 1899 into a privileged world of landed wealth and social prominence, Nabokov was forced, like so many other Russians of his class and culture, to flee the Bolshevik Revolution, which stripped his family of its property and wealth.
After graduating from Cambridge University in England, the aspiring writer took up residence in the Russian emigre community of Berlin, later moving briefly to Paris, and supplemented his meager earnings as a writer by giving tennis and English lessons. By the time that a new set of political crises was about to dismantle Europe’s emigre communities - and much else on the Continent - Nabokov had published nine novels in Russian and established his reputation among emigre readers, critics, and literary scholars as the leading writer of his generation.
By the late 1930s, as Europe was preparing for war and the prospect of a return to his native Russia had disappeared, Nabokov realized that he and his Jewish wife, Vera and their six-year-old son, Dmitri, would have to flee Europe. Fluent in English and French since childhood, he made the decision - “one of the most difficult he had ever made” - to become an English writer. In December 1938, he began work on his first English novel, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
In the spring of 1940, as Hitler’s army advanced into Holland, Belgium, and France, the Nabokovs boarded a ship chartered for refugees and sailed from St. Nazaire, Brittany, to New York harbor. Twenty years later, as a result of the fame and financial independence that Lolita unexpectedly brought him, Nabokov, by now the author of a dozen books in English, resigned his professorship at Cornell and moved back to Europe with his wife. The couple settled in Montreux, Switzerland, where Nabokov’s prolific career as a novelist - and his half-century long marriage to Vera -was interrupted only by his death in 1977.
-- Ellen Pifer, “Introduction” in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A Casebook ed. by Ellen Pifer
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Born in 1899 into a privileged world of landed wealth and social prominence, Nabokov was forced, like so many other Russians of his class and culture, to flee the Bolshevik Revolution, which stripped his family of its property and wealth.
After graduating from Cambridge University in England, the aspiring writer took up residence in the Russian emigre community of Berlin, later moving briefly to Paris, and supplemented his meager earnings as a writer by giving tennis and English lessons. By the time that a new set of political crises was about to dismantle Europe’s emigre communities - and much else on the Continent - Nabokov had published nine novels in Russian and established his reputation among emigre readers, critics, and literary scholars as the leading writer of his generation.
By the late 1930s, as Europe was preparing for war and the prospect of a return to his native Russia had disappeared, Nabokov realized that he and his Jewish wife, Vera and their six-year-old son, Dmitri, would have to flee Europe. Fluent in English and French since childhood, he made the decision - “one of the most difficult he had ever made” - to become an English writer. In December 1938, he began work on his first English novel, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
In the spring of 1940, as Hitler’s army advanced into Holland, Belgium, and France, the Nabokovs boarded a ship chartered for refugees and sailed from St. Nazaire, Brittany, to New York harbor. Twenty years later, as a result of the fame and financial independence that Lolita unexpectedly brought him, Nabokov, by now the author of a dozen books in English, resigned his professorship at Cornell and moved back to Europe with his wife. The couple settled in Montreux, Switzerland, where Nabokov’s prolific career as a novelist - and his half-century long marriage to Vera -was interrupted only by his death in 1977.
-- Ellen Pifer, “Introduction” in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A Casebook ed. by Ellen Pifer
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>