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Larry Bone's avatar

Critics are concerned with perfection. But perfection is more of a style thing than a specific content thing. For many writers, content and an authentic voice are always more important mainly because both need to exist for a writer to have a good reason for writing anything and for better being able to access their own experience maybe together with truthfully communicating what they have observed to be the experience of others and how it all interconnects. Perfection is more concerned with the quality of expression. It is a little like comparing Nabokov with Isaac Bashevas Singer. In "Lolita," Nabokov stylistically elevates the sordid affair of an older academic with a 13 year old femme fatale into the idealistic perfection of classical infinite love, personified in those marble statues of long ago lovers clutching one another. In "The Cafeteria," Issac Beshevas Singer examines all sorts of imperfection and all manner of chaos. Perfection is nice if you can latch on to a little bit even if it's just a little bit inside a piece of candy. I like Singer's writing so much more than Nabokov's because he never seems distracted by perfection and sort slips into it when unexpectedly metaphorically tripping over a banana peel. I think writers are mainly concerned with sorting out their personal chaos or someone else's or when both got stuck together. Perfection is impossible unless somehow reached anyway. We will always need writers because there is always so much chaos to sort through and figure out, even more and more everyday. With Singer he is always talking about the real stuff. Nabokov always seemed to be living somewhere else.

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