Morning reading: Nabokov's index cards
Always trying to figure out the “trick” to writing a novel, Adam turns to Nabokov.
Yesterday, as I thought about Colson Whitehead’s bullet-point outline breaking down each page into a few words, my mind went to Vladimir Nabokov and his index cards.
For some time I was a Nabokov obsessive. How did I learn that he wrote manuscripts on lined 6”x4” index cards? Maybe it was mentioned in Nabokov’s Selected Letters 1940-1977, the first VN I read (Spring 2002: the salad days after graduating from college, before finding a job).
Michael Leddy captures this quote from the forward to Nabokov’s Lolita: A Screenplay:
After a leisurely lunch, prepared by the German cook who came with the house, I would spend another four-hour span in a lawn chair, among the roses and mockingbirds, using lined index cards and a Blackwing pencil, for copying and recopying, rubbing out and writing anew, the scenes I had imagined in the morning.
Richard DiDio writes about the index cards as well:
Nabokov’s writing method typically included composing on index cards. Quirkily, he would shuffle these cards daily, allowing him to see different paths to take by looking at the story unfolding in different ways. This non-linearity in structure was also matched by a non-linearity in focus: he often wrote the middle of the story last.
There are interesting echoes above to the Colson Whitehead interview, such as writing the middle last, which I don't remember having heard about Nabokov. Alas, no source is given.
You can see and shuffle Nabokov’s card fairly inexpensively. Pick up a used copy of The Original of Laura hardcover, VN’s posthumous novel. The book was cleverly designed to include all of the perforated cards that made up the lost manuscript.
