It's only when we get into very general statements that we get into trouble. Obvioulsy Faulkner isn't a bad writer. He communicates with the written word and he's very successful - popular and evocative. Personally I don't like Nabokov - his work just doesn't move me much. But of course I'm willing to admit that I may have missed something. Nabokov may be quite right when he suggests that Faulkner is inelegant. You can look at Faulkner's illusions and see that they are done kind of roughly, compared with other artist/illusionists. By the same token, you can say quite correctly that Jackson Pollock rendered his illusions with sloppy roughness compared to the way Caravaggio created his illusions.
And I think if we talk about art and truth we are definitely in trouble. It's insane to talk about one made-up story's being more "true" than another made-up story. But we can say that the illusion is more successful or deftly manipulated.
There is one statement I'll make about art and truth - if it's funny, it's true. Something either is or is not funny, but almost nothing that is funny is, in fact, true. Indeed, the most persuasive theory of comedy I know about suggests that comedy must have an implicit absurdity at the cognitive level to be funny - that the difference between something that sounds like a funny joke and something that actually is funny is some absurdity woven into the joke.
The entire purpose of art is illusion - how a few lines that look nothing at all like a cat can make us "see" a cat in our minds.
Boddi