Word: nabokov
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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WHEN VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH Nabokov says he writes, ideally, for a lot of little nabokovs, he's not just talking about people who share his eccentric view of "reality" (always in quotes) or his predilection for lepidoptera. To fully appreciate Nabokov's work you need at least a portion of easy brilliance, his fluency in three languages, and his passion for the purest and most pointless play with words. Beyond that, to enjoy his latest novel it helps to have a passing familiarity with his entire oeuvre...
...this isn't necessarily bad. We've come to expect a reasonable share of obscurity and allusiveness from the Modern Novel, and if Nabokov prefers to allude only to his own work, okay. The first sign that all is not well between Nabokov and the reader is the compulsive desire to anagram every unfamiliar name (or else run to a Russian dictionary) so as not to miss some crucial symbolic connection. Next comes the realization that there isn't really all that much there to miss...
...writer-in-exile, he crosses the ocean to become a writer-in-residence at a prestigious Eastern university. The memoirs at hand dash through some fifty years, four wives, and a series of books (first in Russian and later in English) that correspond, more or less, to Nabokov...
...loves and "catalogue raisonne of the roots and origins and amusing birth canals of many images in my Russian and especially English fiction." We don't get a satisfying view, though. Wives and books--all, apparently, harlequins-- remain "outlines directed by reason" (to use the words of a younger Nabokov) seen as though through "the faceted eye of an insect." Vadim's wives are never more than shallow foils for his self-indulgence. One can't help suspecting that he needs so many (real-life Vladimir has married only once) for no better reason than to provide, as he proposes...
LIKE A LOT in this book, this is a potentially intriguing thought that never comes to much. Nabokov uses his literary persona as license to play various sorts of games with words while avoiding the standard obligations of fiction writing, like characterization. A bit of solid, readable narrative would seem a relief to even the most liberal-thinking of readers after endless pages of more or less dazzling feats of verbal fancy on the order...