Word: nabokovs
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Pale Fire was Vladimir Nabokov's triumphant literary joke about the attempts of a mad pedant to write about the life and work of a poet whom he barely knew and whose qualities eluded him completely. The book seemed to be the very last laugh at the extremes of the New Criticism-destructive works of literary detection, prolix biographies, and any number of other sins against common sense and the simple enjoyment...
...seemed unlikely that anyone would try to outdo Nabokov at his own game, but Steven Millhauser, a Brown University graduate student, has given it a game try in a really promising short novel. His jokes are broader than Nabokov's and are not woven into the story with nearly the master's exquisite timing. But he is witty, and his conceit -making both the artist and his biographer small boys-is elastic enough to stretch the length of the book...
Counterpointing the realistic presentation of Ruby's fling with Earl Tibbits is the treatment of her niece Vivian, a self-contained, gum-chewing teenager, much closer to Nabokov's Lolita than was Sue Lyon, who played the part in Kubrick's movie. With no claims to any particular beauty or charm. Vivian succeeds--where Ruby doesn't--simply because she is young, because she doesn't care, because she regards adoration...
From time to time Duffy escapes from her book-strewn office to interview an author. She visited Vladimir Nabokov in Switzerland ("warm but very formal-we met at meals"); Saul Bellow in Chicago ("difficult, a very private man who doesn't like to talk about himself"); Mary McCarthy in Paris ("vibrant and intuitive, she doesn't come on as a bluestocking"). Duffy finds that "most serious writers are self-conscious and reticent. They aren't used to being interviewed, and they're wary." Authors of lesser stature are more talkative. Erich Segal (Love Story) met Duffy...
...reflect a part of the popular mind, but finally it will have accomplished the most by having its best ideas stolen by other, better manipulators. Hence, Anthony Burgess and Kubrick in the just barely future of A Clockwork Orange, and the imaginary but parallel worlds of Vladimir Nabokov...