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

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intention either to convey the impression that "seeing
through things is the professional function of a
novelist", for "a novelist is, like all mortals, more
fully at home on the surface of the present than in
the ooze of the past. "6 What the example should do is
to convey an idea of what a novelist is capable of.
It demonstrates what intricate and complex patterns
of interrelations between seemingly disparate things
he can perceive behind the simplest and most inconspicuous
object and its "thin veneer of immediate reality",
which is by the common observer taken to be its only
reality. An old pencil gives rise to speculations and
grants insights that might in the end comprehend the
whole "world that Jack built" (8).
The example shows by contrast why Hugh Person does
not succeed in his quest. His problem is that "actuality
and memory fail to coincide"7, and, one should add,
that actuality gets between him and his memories. The
present condition of the pencil, its shape, colour
and length, is no obstacle for the artist in his pursuit
of its history and everything that is even remotely
connected with it. For Hugh, an ordinary man,
the present condition of things is an obstacle with
which he cannot cope. The new colours of shutters
and houses (Villa Nastia is now painted blue), the
fact that there are new houses and roads%changing the
surroundings, all those thin veneers through which
the artist can see easily, combine and seem to form
a solid opaque wall which screens the past from his