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

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tain moments he positively flaunts his omniscience.
He explicitly draws the reader's attention to his own
presence and his own doings and allows glimpses of
his narrative tricks and techniques: "Now we have to
bring into focus the main street of Witt... ", he opens
one chapter and then proceeds to do just that (44).
He leaves no doubt that he is the one to decide what
is interesting and worth noting (42).
The most conspicuous instances are those in which
he frankly manipulates his main character. He selects
the main character in the first sentence of the novel
and gives him no chance to escape: "Here's the person
I want" (1). At another moment he decides that Hugh
should not recognize a certain letter because he might
feel hurt if he did (38), and later on he even admits
that it might not be impossible for him to influence
Hugh so as to induce him to take or avoid a certain
course of action (92).
As so often before, then, Nabokov quite candidly
exposes what he is telling as a piece of art and
allows the reader many insights into the devices of
his craft. Tranparent Things is certainly in part
what Herbert Grabes sees in it: "... ein Buch über das
Verhältnis des 'allwissenden' Autors zu seinen Ge-
schöpfen.
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But then Hugh's story could not have been invented
and written if the author had not had the gifts and
insights that he has been seen to have. The piece of
art explains and exposes the gifts that made its creation
possible, or, to put it in the inverted manner