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

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ADA
Ada1 has more than any other Nabokov novel puzzled,
perplexed, and, in a few cases, even annoyed critics,
and it has caused one of them
...
to part company with a writer whose
work I have enjoyed so often and so much
until now. But I fear that I shall not
be among the Happy Few who will survive
this latest and bizarre 2
excursion.
This is what Philip Toynbee says at the end of a
review in which he does admit that "Of course, of
course, there are marvellous things in Ada, such as
"a wealth of exquisitely fine writing", "a wide var-
iety of different narrative devices", "a massive
homogeneity of tone", but in which he deplores "all
the knowing literary references; all the wise saws;
the interminable instances; " and also "the perpetual
demonstration of agility and skill -", and "the
constant implication that we haven't understood the
half of it. "3
A more recent critic, Douglas Fowler, adds a number
of complaints to those of the early reader Toynbee.
He describes Ada as "a... mannered, self-referential
encyclopedia [which] frequently seems to represent
an attempt on Nabokov's part to satisfy a series of
private fantasies. "4 On Antiterra, he says, "all of
Nabokov's private interests achieve public importance.
" "Nabokov uses Antiterra to settle several
old scores, largely cultural, bookish and idiosyncratic
in nature"6, and sacrifices "all mimetic and
dramatic interest" in Ada to a number of "semiprivate