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Summary
Summary
As a child in Russia, Vladimir Nabokov enjoyed conjuring: "I loved doing simple tricks--turning water into wine, that kind of thing." In this engrossing book Michael Wood explores the blend of arrogance and mischief that makes Nabokov such a fascinating and elusive master of fiction. Wood argues that Nabokov is neither the aesthete he liked to pretend to be nor the heavy-handed moralist recent critics make him. Major works like Pnin, Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada appear in a new light, but there are also chapters on earlier works, like the Real Life of Sebastian Knight ; on selected short stories; and on the translation of Eugene Onegin, as well as detailed discussions of Nabokov's ideas of literature, memory, pity, and pain.
The book comes fully to terms with Nabokov's blend of playfulness and seriousness, delving into the real delight of reading him and the odd disquiet that lurks beneath that pleasure. Wood's speculations spin outward to illuminate the ambiguities and aspirations of the modern novel, and to raise the question of how we uncover "the author" in a work, without falling into the obvious biographical traps. The Magician's Doubts slices through the dustier conventions of criticism and never loses sight of the emotional and sensual pleasure of reading.
Author Notes
Michael Wood is Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English at Princeton University. His previous works include Stendhal and America in the Movies .
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
Striking insights into the complicated literary art of Vladimir Nabokov. Wood (English/Princeton; America in the Movies, 1975, etc.) frames his investigation with meditations on Nabokov's relationship to pain and loss. A Russian refugee to the West, the novelist chose to write primarily in English. The richness of his prose in English, Wood suggests, compensates for the deprivation he imposed on himself by silencing his native tongue. Nabokov appropriated a range of styles, without establishing an exclusive relationship to any one of them. Nevertheless, Wood shows, his signature, the distinctive mark of his presence, can indeed be read in his works. Nabokov's first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, presents itself as its narrator's memoir of his late brother, a novelist; discussing it, Wood focuses the relationship between his critical themes of authorship and loss. Moving toward his examination of Nabokov's greatest works--Speak, Memory; Lolita; Pale Fire; Ada--Wood brings out the unity in this writer's varied voices, posing ""the question of how the sly idiot, the haughty mandarin, and the great, doubting magician get along together. Particularly when they meet up with, or actually become . . . the theorist of pain."" Reading Speak, Memory, Wood shows how ""masks are Nabokov's business, even as an autobiographer."" Wood's chapter on Lolita disappoints slightly, failing to cohere as an argument. He returns to the rails, however, in a meditation on Nabokov's translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Mobilizing all of the resources he has developed, Wood turns to consider Pnin, Pale Fire, and Ada in a concluding trio of essays. His consideration of languages as translation helps him here, as he strives to develop his themes--the multiplicity of Nabokov's identities, and his experience of pain--into a picture of the novelist as magician of morals. These appreciations of Nabokov will resonate deeply for those initiated into his mysteries. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
Nabokov criticism is an industry--more than 60 books and many hundreds of articles. Early studies tended to focus on Nabokov the magician's glittering, virtuoso style; more recent criticism on Nabokov the humanist, the moralist, the metaphysician, etc. Wood (Princeton Univ.), who often finds Nabokov's virtuosity shallow and irritating, stakes out his own Nabokov--the poet of loss, absence, and death and of resistance to these inevitabilities. This vulnerable, "doubting" Nabokov, sharply at odds with his haughty public image, is, Woods thinks, primarily associated with the English novels that (with the exception of Transparent Things, 1972, and Look at the Harlequins!, CH, Jan'75) are the subject of his study. Each of the novels, plus Speak, Memory (1951) and his translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (1964), is subtly probed for the often latent themes of loss. Wood's view of Nabokov the humanist and moralist is far from novel, having been well argued in Ellen Pifer's Nabokov and the Novel (CH, Apr'81) and elsewhere. Wood's gracefully written book covers from its own point of view the novels previously treated in several critical studies. Nabokov is the stuff that dissertations are made from and no research library should be without this volume. Upper-division undergraduate and above. D. B. Johnson; emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara
