Subject
WOODS book
Date
Body
EDITORIAL COMMENT: The following brief remarks on Michael Wood's new
book are for informational purposes only. Wood's book came out with
Chatto and Windus in London last year, but has not been easily avail-
able here. It has now been reprinted by Princeton UP. DBJ
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Michael Wood. NABOKOV: THE MAGICIAN'S DOUBTS AND THE RISKS OF FICTION
Princeton UP, 1995
Nabokov criticism is an industry--over sixty books and many hun-
dreds of articles. Early studies tended to focus on Nabokov the
Magician's glittering, virtuoso style; more recent criticism--on
Nabokov the humanist, the moralist, the metaphysician, etc. Michael
Wood (Princeton), who often finds Nabokov's virtuosity shallow and
irritating, stakes out his own Nabokov--the poet of loss, absence,
death and of resistance to these inevitabilities. This vulnerable,
"doubting" Nabokov, sharply at odds with his haughty public image, is
Woods thinks, something primarily associated with the English novels
which (with the exception of Transparent Things and Look at the Harle-
quins!) are the subject of his study. Particular importance is
assigned to the role of Nabokov's switch from Russian to English in
demarcating the new "haunted" Nabokov from the Russian writer.
Each of the novels, plus Speak, Memory and the Onegin translation, is
subtly probed for the often latent themes of loss. Wood's view of
Nabokov the humanist and moralist is far from novel, having been well
argued in Ellen Pifer's Nabokov and the Novel (1980) and elsewhere.
Wood's gracefully written book covers from its own point of view the
novels previously treated in numerous critical studies.
Wood's own frame of reference owes most to Roland Barthes and Walter
Benjamin, with nods to Derrida and Kristeva. Conspicuously missing are
allusions to George Steiner who has speculated on aspects of Wood's major
themes. In things Nabokovian, Wood draws chiefly on his British Empire
colleagues and seems little aware of North American scholarship, or
perhaps finding it irrelevant to his interests. The volume comes
accompanied by blurbs from Susan Sontag and Edward Said suggesting that
the volume is aimed at a general audience rather than the Nabokov
specialist. For a rather detailed, favorable review of the volume, I can
refer the reader to Gabriel Josipovichi's review of the British edition,
"Nabokov's Hidden Humanity" in the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT of August 26,
1995, p. 22.
book are for informational purposes only. Wood's book came out with
Chatto and Windus in London last year, but has not been easily avail-
able here. It has now been reprinted by Princeton UP. DBJ
----------------------------------------
Michael Wood. NABOKOV: THE MAGICIAN'S DOUBTS AND THE RISKS OF FICTION
Princeton UP, 1995
Nabokov criticism is an industry--over sixty books and many hun-
dreds of articles. Early studies tended to focus on Nabokov the
Magician's glittering, virtuoso style; more recent criticism--on
Nabokov the humanist, the moralist, the metaphysician, etc. Michael
Wood (Princeton), who often finds Nabokov's virtuosity shallow and
irritating, stakes out his own Nabokov--the poet of loss, absence,
death and of resistance to these inevitabilities. This vulnerable,
"doubting" Nabokov, sharply at odds with his haughty public image, is
Woods thinks, something primarily associated with the English novels
which (with the exception of Transparent Things and Look at the Harle-
quins!) are the subject of his study. Particular importance is
assigned to the role of Nabokov's switch from Russian to English in
demarcating the new "haunted" Nabokov from the Russian writer.
Each of the novels, plus Speak, Memory and the Onegin translation, is
subtly probed for the often latent themes of loss. Wood's view of
Nabokov the humanist and moralist is far from novel, having been well
argued in Ellen Pifer's Nabokov and the Novel (1980) and elsewhere.
Wood's gracefully written book covers from its own point of view the
novels previously treated in numerous critical studies.
Wood's own frame of reference owes most to Roland Barthes and Walter
Benjamin, with nods to Derrida and Kristeva. Conspicuously missing are
allusions to George Steiner who has speculated on aspects of Wood's major
themes. In things Nabokovian, Wood draws chiefly on his British Empire
colleagues and seems little aware of North American scholarship, or
perhaps finding it irrelevant to his interests. The volume comes
accompanied by blurbs from Susan Sontag and Edward Said suggesting that
the volume is aimed at a general audience rather than the Nabokov
specialist. For a rather detailed, favorable review of the volume, I can
refer the reader to Gabriel Josipovichi's review of the British edition,
"Nabokov's Hidden Humanity" in the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT of August 26,
1995, p. 22.