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

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minor minds, and such vital problems as overpopulation
in urban centers" (24). Like Nabokov, he has no re-
spect for Freud, whom (again like his creator) he
calls "the Viennese Quack" (126); and his approach to
the teaching of literature resembles Nabokov's: like
his "twin" he teaches Ulysses
in
... a purely textual light, without
organic allegories and quasi-Greek myths,
and that sort of tripe (131-132).
They both find the U. S. A. "altogether admirable" (130),
and it is clear that as exiles they should both have
similar views on the Bolshevist state (132).
The second bunch of parallels is offered by their
literary production. What Vadim says about himself
applies fully to Nabokov:
In the world of athletic games there has
never been, I think, a World Champion of
Lawn Tennis and Ski;. yet in two Literatures,
as dissimilar as grass and snow, I have
been the first to achieve that kind of feat.
I do not know.
. . what physical stress may be
involved in serving one day a sequence of
thirty-six aces at sea level and on the
next soaring from a ski jump 136 meters
through bright mountain air. Colossal, no
doubt, and, perhaps, inconceivable. But I
have managed to transcend the rack and the
wrench of literary metamorphosis (122),
and this refers of course to the switch
from
... my glorious self-developed Russian
to... an English I alone would be responsible
for, in all its new ripples and
changing light (124).
They both make this switch with the same novel, name-
ly The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, which corre-
sponds to See under Real in Vadim's oeuvre.
But even with respect to their works parody sets
in, for although their novels have a strong family