Reading Nabokov

This lively and imaginative work guides readers through the complex and elusive fictional world of Vladimir Nabokov. Admirer and critic both, Mr. Fowler discusses subject, style, and technique in Nabokov's fiction and assesses his virtues and limitations as a writer. Mr. Fowler begins with a chapter on the novel Bend Sinister, drawing from it a set of useful generalizations applicable to the body of Nabokov's fiction. He expands and refines these thematic, moral, and narrative constants as he interprets the short stories. "Cloud, Castle, Lake," "Spring in Fialta," and "Triangle within Circle," then develops his argument in convincing detail in chapters on the novels Pale Fire, Pnin, Lolita, and Ada. Along the way he refers to Nabokov's autobiography Speak, Memory, to his critical work, and to his poetry. The outstanding qualities of Nabokov's novels and stories, Mr. Fowler asserts, "are the compassion he makes us feel so frequently for his characters; the brilliant use of language—perhaps the most dazzling prose ever written in English; the genius for mimicry and sharp observation; the kind of laughter that doesn't forget pain; the tart, funny, exhilarating combination of elegance and venom; the slapstick hilarity." Serious and more casual readers of the novelist will learn much from this welldrawn map of the Nabokovian landscape.