Pynchon/Nabokov

[Stefan Schuber]

Perhaps because I just finished _Lolita_ the differences between Nabokov
and Pynchon seem more pronounced than any commonalities: Nabokov, at least
as I read him, seems much more caught up in the tissues and textures of
language(s) -- their collisions and collusions and those of the people who
speak them, are spoken through them, and are represented by or who
represent themselves in language(s).

Dear old tired, effete Humbert, sometime writer, litterateur and hopeless
lecher, comes to America and there falls in love with a sublimely corrupted
youth of that race. By contrast, Slothrop ... well, we know (sorta) what
happens in Europe to our ol' Buddy at the behest of Them.

Again, perhaps it's Nabokov's multilingual punning and rather cerebral
humours, but I don't catch such a sense of paranoia in his writings. His
sentences, too, are crafted, crafty, chiseled, polished -- but they aren't
get-down, shitkicking yankeetalk, either

For what it's worth,

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