Nabokov and His Fiction

Published in 1999 to mark the centenary of Vladimir Nabokov's birth, this volume brings together the work of eleven of the world's foremost Nabokov scholars offering perspectives on the writer and his fiction. Their essays cover a broad range of topics and approaches, from close readings of major texts, including Speak, Memory and Pale Fire, to penetrating discussions of the significant relationship between Nabokov's personal beliefs and experiences and his art. Several of the essays attempt to uncover the artistic principles that underlie the author's literary creations, while others seek to place Nabokov's work in a variety of literary and cultural contexts. Among these essays are a first glimpse at a little-known work, The Tragedy of Mr Morn, as well as a perspective on Nabokov's most famous novel, Lolita. The volume as a whole offers valuable insight into Nabokov scholarship. "Read this collection; it is challenging in its strong readings, and I salute it." Irving Malin, Review of Contemporary Fiction "All of the essays in the volume mark significant steps forward in Nabokov scholarship...The editor is to be commended for offering an anthology which deserves no just to be read, but also to be reread." Slavic and East European Journal "The collection presents not only a substantive sampling of diverse areas of critical inquiry at the end of the fourth decade of serious Nabokov scholarship, but offers a home to several of the most interesting individual pieces that have been published in those forty years." Stephen Jan Parker, The Russian Review1. Nabokov at 100 Julian W. Connolly; Part I. Artistic Strategies and Themes: 2. Setting his myriad faces in his text: Nabokov's authorial presence revisited Gavriel Shapiro; 3. 'The gift of imagining facts': Vladimir Nabokov and the art of autobiography Galya Diment; 4. The near-tyranny of the author: Pale Fire Maurice Couturier; 5. Jewish questions in Nabokov's art and life Maxim D. Shrayer; 6. 'The dead are good mixers': notes on individualism in Nabokov's fiction Leona Toker; 7. Nabokov's trinity (on the movement of Nabokov's themes) Gennady Barabtarlo; Part II. Literary and Cultural Contexts: 8. 'Imagining other and better ways of looking': Nabokov's response to the legacy of Fedor Dostoevsky Julian W. Connolly; 9. Her monster, his nymphet: Nabokov, Mary Shelley, and the specter of sexism Ellen Pifer; 10. Vladimir Nabokov and Rupert Brooke D. Barton Johnson; 11. From time to eternity: the critique of historicism in Nabokov's Russian writings Alexander Dolinin; 12. Poshlust as cultural critique: Nabokov with Adorno and Malraux at the peak of Hitlerism John Burt Foster, Jr.; Selected bibliography of works by Vladimir Nabokov; Selected bibliography of work on Vladimir Nabokov.