Nabokovia

[Jan KLIMKOWSKI]

Ran across the following on the Nabokovian listworld, a sphere of a very 
different order from this, but thought it might appeal to some.  It's the 
abstact of a paper presented at the Second Nice Conference on Nabokov, 
"Nabokov, at the Crossroads of Modernism and Postmodernism," June 22-24, 
1995.


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Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, College of the Holy Cross: "The V- Shaped
Paradigm: Nabokov and Pynchon."

        This paper surveys biographical and textual evidence of Pynchon's
debt to Nabokov, and discusses the similarity in their narrative technique.
I will use Success-an imaginary novel embedded in Nabokov's The Real Life
of Sebastian Knight  (95-100)-as a model for my investigation, and for the
similarity of Nabokov's and Pynchon's narratives. Success, "one of the most
complicated researches that has ever been attempted by a writer," traces
the mechanisms by which fate finally brings together two different
individuals. Its narrative structure, as Nabokov's narrator describes it,
is shaped roughly like the letter V, "with two lines which have finally
tapered to the point of meeting" (96).

        Success  provides a useful model for tracing the fateful
conjunction of these two writers. Fate managed to bring both of them to
Cornell University, where Nabokov taught Pynchon in one course (most likely
"Masters of European Literature") between fall 1957 and spring 1959. They
may not have had any substantial personal interaction, however; indeed,
given Nabokov's teaching style, and the fact that he could not remember
Pynchon, it is doubtful that they did. And yet Pynchon was Nabokov's
student in more than the one course he took from him. V., the narrator of
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight,  seems to be Sebastian's ideal successor
and biographer, in one sense, because he has read Sebastian's works so
carefully and lovingly. The same could be said of Pynchon's relationship to
Nabokov. Pynchon's first three novels offer ample evidence that he had
carefully studied Nabokov's English fiction (especially Lolita). His first
novel, V.,   in particular, reveals the pervasive influence of Nabokov's
first English novel, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight,  in matters of
plot, technique, characterization, style, and even wordplay (for example,
the preponderance of V's).

   _Success_  provides a useful model, too, for tracing the relationship
between these two texts, and between Nabokov's and Pynchon's work in
general. Success  also illustrates the most important lesson Pynchon
learned from Nabokov: how to use narrative form to question the very nature
of "reality." Accordingly, I will show how Pynchon's V. recapitulates the
very same "detective theme"-in content, in generic parody, and in literary
form-that Nabokov's narrator "V." traces in all of Sebastian's work. Like
Nabokov, then, Pynchon transforms classic detective-story formulas into
parodic, inverted, self-reflexive narrative structures. Both writers
manipulate detective-story formulas in order to question narrative itself
(epecially in terms of history, reliability, and closure) as well as the
nature of meaning and interpretation.
        Ultimately, my reading of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight  and V.
shows how Nabokov's and Pynchon's shared affinity for parody,
epistemology, self-reflexivity, and narrative experimentation locate these
novels precisely where two other lines-modernism and postmodernism-also
taper "to the point of meeting." Nabokov's and Pynchon's similar
transformations of detective-story formulas, in particular, suggests that
the "metaphysical detective story" may be an exemplary postmodernist text.
Indeed, comparing their novels, in turn, to "metaphysical detective
stories" by Borges, Alfau, Robbe-Grillet, Perec, Sciascia, Eco, and Auster
(among others), should help us to clarify the distinct contributions that
Nabokov and Pynchon have made to postmodernism.

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Brotherly
jan