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Finally, in “William Dean Howell,” Vidal elaborates on a theme in his essays which completely eluded me for nearly 200 pages.

Previously, I mentioned Vidal’s tendency to state his ideas…Which often sound much like opinions, or hypotheses…As if they were known facts. No supporting arguments whatsoever. One example is-I’m paraphrasing-“Novels are no longer written to be read; rather, they are written to be taught.”

How many times in the 192 pages that precede “William Dean Howell” did he say something to that effect? I don’t know. Conservative estimate: 7-10 times.

But no matter-I understand now.

The theme comes up during-Probably, in my opinion-This best, most complete of Vidal’s essays in the first 200 pages of United States. The topic is the titular William Dean Howell, newspaper editor and author.

Vidal introduces him artfully: In the context of the aftermath of the Haymarket riot of Chicago, 1886-Quick description of that event: Workers were politicizing the 8 hour day, things got out of hand, someone threw a bomb, people died, outcry. Vidal presents Howell as the only “intellectual” of any repute who came out against the courts for more or less at random indicting 8 individuals for for conspiracy to murder. “There was no hard evidence of any kind,” Vidal says.

I have wished to deal in facts. One of these is that we had a political execution n Chicago yesterday,

Howell said after 4 of the 8 men were hung.

(Of the others, one was let off early on, two had their sentences commuted, the last committed suicide before the execution.)

Grim times.

But let’s get back on the subject of Vidal’s “Novels are written to be taught” comment. I’ve often heard it said writers “write what they know.” So, for instance, a businessman writes about business; a socialite may write about ascending (or descending) the social ladder. Well, Vidal says “most of or novelists now teach school.” (To name one, Nabokov taught at Cornell.)

Then-Finally, the illumination I’ve been waiting for-He outlines a rather elaborate ecology of literature, beginning with an archetypal aspiring novelist:

[…] he would graduate from high school; go on to university and take a creative writing course; get an M.A. for having submitted a novel […] he will become a teacher. With luck, he will obtain tenure […] he will write novels that others like himself will want to teach just as he, obligingly, teaches their novels. He will visit other campuses as a lecturer and he will talk about his books and about those books written by other teachers to an audience made up of ambitious young people who intend to write novels to be taught by one another to the rising generation and so on and so on.

I regret I have no further insights, or even much of an opinion, whether there is much truth to his argument “novels are written to be taught.” But certainly, more novels are being written by students of literature, many of whom and steeped in the academic ecosystem outlined above.

Consider this essay a sort of self-conscious, poor man’s “Eureka” moment.

Wilson and Nabokov fascinated me. I have read some Nabokov; I have not read Wilson.

I suppose I should qualify my claim: I read Nabokov in another lifetime. So distant, my college years seem, I wonder: how superficial are my memories? I am remembering my memories, or am I inventing them.

I cannot remember the physical space in which class took place.

I cannot remember my professor – not even whether it was a man or a woman. So with the TA.

I assume there was a TA.

And yet, I do some have some artifacts: my college transcript includes a semester of Russian Lit; my bedroom bookcase contains books with familiar authors and titles: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment; Lermontov, Hero of Our Time; Pushkin, Eugene Onegin and short stories, Tolstoy, Anna Karenina; Turgenev, Fathers and Sons.

But no Nabokov on the shelf. My thought is Oh, must have read short stories.

Or, maybe just one.

Must have been a printout, or online.

Or, maybe I didn’t read any Nabokov.

I don’t remember.

What I do remember is a terrible interview with an adviser from the University of Chicago when I considered transferring my sophomore year.

What is the opposite of serendipitous? – Something with the opposite definition, but which has same whimsical, or playful, sound to it.

Whatever it is, the fact that Russian Lit stood out to my interviewer- above any other course on my transcript – was that: the opposite of serendipitous.

I didn’t realize it would be that way immediately. I remembered enjoying Russian Lit. I assumed I would have something intelligent to say about it. Or, something to say, period. Anything. And yet, as my interviewer asked me questions about the course, I discovered I could only comment on my experience in the most superficial ways. I could not remember the name of the main character of the book I remembered enjoying most (Hero of Our Time). Worse, I could not remember anything that character said. Or did. I could not remember the book, or why I enjoyed the book. Hell, maybe I didn’t enjoy it!

That memory from my interview at the University of Chicago – much more vivid (and humiliating) than my memories of Russian Lit – has effectively superseded my memories Russian Lit. Or, said differently, my memory of Russian Lit is a vivid (and humiliating) memory of not remembering it.

All the more reason to record my interest in Nabokov – specifically his relationship with Wilson – in this medium.

Updike neatly packages together a few book reviews – some of Wilson’s books, some of Nabokov’s book, some collections of either’s letters. Acting as preface to his reviews is a semi-biographical, semi-critical essay titled “Edmund Wilson’s Fiction: A Personal Account.”

Therein, he draws the connection between the two authors, which fascinates me. First, he mentions Wilson was not much encouraged to write fiction – his “patrons” (so to speak) – encouraged his journalism. For example, New Yorker, who employed his as a journalist. New Yorker did not often, if ever, publish his fiction. On the contrary, then Updike mentions New Yorker did often publish Nabokov’s works – at Wilson’s urging.

Reading only that little bit which I conveyed in the aforementioned paragraph, I gleaned that the intersection of Wilson and Nabokov must be an interesting one. Or, I hoped it would be an interesting one.

Fortunately, it was. Or, Updike represents it that way. His review of The Nabokov-Wilson Letters is substantiates the relationship with the “stuff” of what I hoped. Copious correspondence between the two – Nabokov asks Wilson what he should teach at his class at Cornell; Nabokov replies that he’s not a fan of some of Wilson’s suggestions; Wilson urges him to think again; Nabokov reconsiders and thanks Wilson for challenging him; the class went great. Wilson bring Nabokov into his patronage fold.

Just two intellectual bros!

Until – and I could be vastly oversimplifying (although I hope it is this simple … I think simplicity makes the story so charming) – the two had a go at translating Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin to English together. That project would mark the end of the literary bros. Updike says

A friendship that lived by language died by language […] it was Russian words like netu, vse, zloy, and pochuya, English words like “curvate,” “habitude,” “dit,” “gloam,” “scrab,” and “mollitude,” all of which figure in the great Onegin debate.

I imagination their process as analogous to PQA – one takes a stab at things, the other critiques, suggests. In that process there must be tact. At some point it becomes a negotiation. As the quality reaches a certain point, the suggestions become less unambiguously good or bad. They are just thoughts, open to interpretation.

Must we do anything more than acknowledge those thoughts?

It’s not always clear. In retrospect, we may find each other unreasonably amiable, or rigid. Should have cared more that one time. Shouldn’t have complicated things so much the other time..

In any case, I hope we work it out before one of us is dying, and the other is writing of his “former friend in poor health” (Nabokov in Times Book Review.)

Still, Updike says referring to The Nabokov-Wilson Letters,

[I]t is good to have, even in a dust jacket that looks like butcher’s paper, this ample record of a former friendship between two polymathic, intensely committed minds and drolly stubborn, cagey personalities.