It’s impossible to write well without reading widely.
That’s a well understood truism of the art and craft of writing. Les écrivains sont des lecteurs.
For most of us, about the best we can hope to become is a competent writer, a decent one, a writer who’s not demonstrably awful. A bit on the lame side.
But as aspiring and/or practicing writers, we must continue to read those who write far better than we can ever hope to.
Years ago, I picked Nabokov’s Pnin off a shelf in a now-gone bookstore, almost randomly. Maybe I liked the cover? It was a long time ago, but I can remember feeling envy. Damn, could I ever write that well?
Much later, his Pale Fire, a complex masterpiece filled with literary and cultural references, an often unreliable narrator, and internal annotations/commentary. After that, Speak, Memory, a brilliant account of his early life in Russia and European exile. But that description hardly does it justice. If you read nothing else of Nabokov’s, treat yourself to Speak, Memory.
More recently, Robert Roper’s Nabokov in America: On the Road to Lolita in preparation for reading Lolita itself. For that, I’ve now started on The Annotated Lolita with extensive commentary notes by Alfred Appel, Jr. Everything I’ve ever read about Nabokov’s most famous book mentions its multi-layered complexities, so I wasn’t about to dive into the book without a guide. Who would attempt Joyce’s Ulysses without a roadmap?
I’m almost always reading several books simultaneously, and I must have a bit of the masochist in me since I’m not only reading Lolita, I’m also about halfway through Swann’s Way. Nabokov and Proust at the same time? That way lies madness.
So I read and read and read. And write a bit here and there, knowing and accepting that nothing I produce will come close to what some others have been capable of. Even though The Great American Novel might stream from my fingers some day, middle-brow genre novels may well be the best that I can do.
I can live with that.
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