''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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a conscious effort. Things are transparent, the past
shines through them (1).
The author illustrates what he means by picking a
pencil as an example. It is implicit in this example
that the "thin veneer of immediate reality" is formed
by all the qualities a thing has at present. The pencil
is described in great detail:
It was not a hexagonal beauty of Virginia
juniper or African cedar, with the maker's
name imprinted in silver foil, but a very
plain, round, technically faceless old
pencil of cheap pine, dyed a dingy lilac...
the pencil has been worn down to two-thirds
of its original length. The bare wood of
its tapered end has darkened to plumbeous
plum, thus merging in tint with the blunt
tip of graphite whose blind gloss alone
distinguishes it from the wood (6-7).
This, then, is the "now" of the pencil. In an "act
of attention" (6) the author manages to see through
what constitutes its present reality and to move about
freely in space and time to trace its complete his-
tory. He does well to utter a warning to novices to
be careful and not break the tension film if they
wish to remain in the now, because they might fall
through the surface unawares and get lost in the unforeseen
maze that awaits them below.
The sense of being lost in a maze of interrelated
matter seizes even the reader who, after all, has the
author to guide him. For not only is one informed
about what the pencil looked like at thekvarious stages
of its existence; not only is its history unfolded;
the pencil also gives occasion for a description of
how it was made and of what material went into it,
allowing glimpses of the "fleecy fat-giver being