Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Nabokov, Vladimir (Vol. 11) - Robert Martin Adams

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ROBERT MARTIN ADAMS

Sometimes Nabokov in his authorial person mocks the passive or careless reader with his inattention; more often he silently challenges the alert reader by hiding significant clues in insignificant places, covering a real gesture with flashy indirections, hinting through what seem to be accidental correspondences at what seem to be significant significances. The novels click and glitter like sewing machines; they are so active and provoking on their corrugated and baroque surfaces, that one is apt to overlook their retention, at the center, of a touch of romantic sentiment, a shy and well-protected element of human feeling. Beneath even that level, there is occasionally to be found another layer of thought or feeling, perhaps only half-serious but perhaps more than that—persistent enough, in any case, to merit comment—a teasing, tantalizing fascination with the occult and the notion of life after death. (p. 146)

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1. Introduction
2. R. M. Keils
3. James Rother
4. W. Walkarput
5. Robert Martin Adams
6. John Updike
7. June Perry Levine
8. Copyright

1. Vladimir Nabokov