The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives by Julian W. ConnollyIrving Malin
Julian W. Connolly, ed. Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999. 249 pp. $60.00.
In his introduction to this intriguing, necessary collection of eleven essays, Connolly quotes one of Nabokov’s “strong opinions”: “every character follows the course I imagine for him. I am the perfect dictator in that private world insofar as I alone am responsible for its stability and truth.” Although Connolly writes that the six essays in part 1 will explore the implications of this “opinion,” he does not stress the fact that almost every word written by Nabokov is a puzzle: What is the “course” in Pale Fire? Is “I” (the author) deluding us (or himself?) in believing that he can hide his obscure feelings about sexuality or eternity? Does art have any relation to Truth? Perhaps my “referential mania”—an illness mentioned in the story “Signs and Symbols”—perversely undermines Connolly’s safe acceptance of Nabokov’s statement.
I cannot discuss the essays in part 1 in detail, but two of my favorites are particularly brilliant, risky, or “mad”: Shapiro’s essay on the codes used by Nabokov to proclaim his “authorial presence” and Couturier’s essay on Pale Fire. Part 2 contains five essays on “literary and cultural contexts.” My favorite essays in this section are seemingly bizarre: Pifer’s “Her Monster, his Nymphet: Nabokov and Mary Shelley,” and Johnson’s “Vladimir Nabokov and Rupert Brooke.” It is rather common to compare Nabokov and Dostoyevsky, but it requires brilliance to see Lolita as a Gothic novel or to see Nabokov as an “Apollo.”
Read this collection; it is challenging in its strong readings, and I salute it. [Irving Malin]