Sure. I’ve been out walking while clouds raced across the sky.
But I didn’t recognise them as ‘greyhounds of heaven’.
Nabakov did.
Nabakov was a twentieth-century author. He worked in English, Russian and French, yet said:
‘I don’t think in any language. I think in images.’
His lavish descriptions seduced readers… and frustrated critics.
Nabakov’s detractors thought his imagery belonged in poetry rather than novels.
But we’d lose a lot if Nabakov had written ‘jukebox’ instead of:
‘… gaudy automatic machines upon the musical constipation of which the insertion of a small coin used to act as a miraculous laxative…’
For me, his writing is most potent when he focuses his powers of observation; when he gives the reader a single, telling detail.
That’s how he began his disturbed masterpiece, Lolita. On the first page of the book, he made room for the girl’s lone sock.
The detail throws readers off kilter. It raises questions that nag as the plot unfolds:
Is Lolita forgetful, or scruffy, or rebellious, or playful, or wacky, or unguarded, or neglected
or poor, or incapable?
A missing sock could mean any of those things.
So while we might fall short of Nabakov’s perfect phrasing, we could all improve our writing if we noticed more.
Pay attention and, in the words of the man himself…
‘Caress the details… the divine details’.
Aidan Clifford writes for Pinstripe Poets – artists who love their day jobs. This post is part of a series called ‘Write like the Greats’. See the rest here.
