Customer Reviews

Nabokov and the Novel

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I'm not axactly what you'd call a Nabokovian scholar; I read the book as part of a research paper. Nabokov and the Novel is extremely complicated to understand. Pifer is attempting to answer critics' attacks on Nabokov as far as style goes. (manipulating plots and characters, etc.) Her focus throughout the book is that Nabokov had a radical sense of what "real" is, and that affects all his novels. Read it to find out what it is 'cause it's highly philosophical, and I won't even attempt to summarize it! What I thought it lacked was a focus on what makes people love Nabokov in the first place: his unbelievable command of the English language, and his beautiful lyrical prose. I'm not in a position to refute Pifer's claims, but to me, Nabokov seems much more interested in saying what he wants to say than in his plot (and I don't- nor anyone I've spoken to about it find that "offensive" at all). The ideas she introduces may not be that original, but it was very interesting to see how she ties it all up in a neat bundle using so many examples from Nabokov's English and Russian novels.