Done with Bonaparte

The title comes from a song by Mark Knopfler about a soldier who is, well…Done with Bonaparte.

By the same token my obsession w/Nabokov has, I think, just about played itself out. I was watching one of the many lifestyle reality shows on MTV last night with my wife (I find women who consume pop culture very attractive) and it occurred to me just how worthless it really is to pursue the elegant constructions of a Nabokov. These kids on these reality shows, their vocabularies can’t be more than 100 words, at best, and they use these 100 words in various rote incantations centered around “amazing” or “completely” or “you know”. Watching them, you are struck by the idea that most human communication is no more complex than its animal equivalent. All the real subtext comes from facial expressions, hand gestures, that sort of thing.

So I went to bed thinking that I was done with Nabokov. What’s the point, anyway? I can’t write like him, I haven’t got the talent. And even if I could, how relevant would my stories be? Wouldn’t they just be wrapped in layers of superfluity? And even if I had Nabokov’s command and every word had its meaning and purpose, how many people would “get it”? You can see, following Nabokov’s career, that at some point he developed a technique by which he could satisfy both himself and the reading public’s craving for the sensational; he re-invigorated that old Russian staple, the Buffoon.

Bringing the Buffoon into the 20^th century and turning him into something both menacing and mesmerizing allowed Nabokov to win readership while at the same time remaining true to his craft, etc. But few people really get it; they will tell you Lolita is about a perverted old man and a hot young girl. Or they’ll tell you it’s about a Sting song. Really, it’s about language.

But I don’t want to be about language anymore, I can’t do it. I don’t have the talent. I’m at my limit. Nabokov will keep climbing but I’m staying behind in this village with its houses nestled in the mountain’s snowy mantle. They have cable TV. The Hills is coming on.