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DOI 10.1215/00104124-3462691 Nabokov, History, and the Texture of Time. By Will Norman. Routledge Transnational Perspectives on American Literature, 19. New York: Routledge, 2012. xvi, 205 p. Will Norman's recent monograph takes as its point of departure Fredric Jameson's statement that Vladimir Nabokov had had "the luck to find a time capsule of isolation or exile in which to spin out unseasonable forms" (qtd. in Norman 31) -- an inversion of Nabokov's own (and many scholars') sense of his untimeliness and creative autonomy from history. Stepping back from either position, Norman argues and illustrates through perceptive close readings and imaginative comparisons that the desire for ahistoricism is itself historically conditioned by the Post- and Cold War moment. Norman moves from The Gift (1937/1963) through nearly all of Nabokov's major English-language novels, reading provocatively against the critical grain, inasmuch as the dominant narrative builds "precisely on the exclusion of history, which then permits unopposed devotion to formal complexity and thus the celebration of the master" (158). Nabokov, History, and the Texture of Time offers more than a clever or novel interpretation, re-opening familiar works to fresher modes of study -- and reads as a sign of sea change. In the
Comparative Literature – Duke University Press
Published: Mar 1, 2016
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