Nabokov

I have been reading a lot of Nabokov lately, and think I have enough now to fix on why--though he is very, very good--he will never be one of my favorites. What is most compelling for me about narrative is the emotional force of psychologically realistic characters' love for each other, and despite the dazzling variety of his works, Nabokov seems to eschew this mode. His stories repeatedly meditate on emotional distance. People love--but through a glass darkly. Their default state seems to be encasement within their own minds. This places Nabokov squarely in the 20th-century Modern/postmodern tradition: alienation, confusion, isolation, etc. It may be paradigmatic of 20th-century (literary) experience, but for me, it disregards so much of what is human.

( Some examples... )