“I loath Van Veen”
Nabokov, Interview Time (1969), cited in Strong Opinions
“I believe that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that, far from having been a frivolous firebird, I was a rigid moralist kicking sin, cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel — and assigning sovereign power to tenderness, talent, and pride”
Nabokov, Interview (1971) cited in Strong Opinions
“Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss.”
Nabokov, On a Book Entitled Lolita
Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist’s son and translator, joined the Internet discussion with his recollection that his father thought the idea that either Shade or Kinbote could have invented the other barely less absurd than the idea that each could have invented the other…
https://thenabokovian.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/NABOKV-L-0013164___body.html
As I continue to my project of re-reading Ada, a couple of aspects are a struggle. One is the richness and allusiveness (or less charitably incomprehensibility) of the writing – Brian Boyd’s annotations are a great help there. The other difficult aspect is the motley appeal of the novel. While a clearer understanding of the structures make me appreciate it more, I am certainly not the only reader not to take to Ada. Even Boyd includes a kind of plea for patience and persistence in his Ada: the place of consciousness.
That aspects of the novel, and certainly its protagonists, are seemingly intentionally repellent has puzzled a number of readers. In response some have gone so far as to suggest unorthodox or revisionist readings of Ada. I’m going to consider here
- David Auerbach‘s proposal that Van is a radically unreliable narrator and that large portions of the novel are part of his fantasy (Kinbote Triumphant in Hell: The Riddle of Nabokov’s Ada)
- Alexey Sklyarenko‘s idea that the editor and typist of the novel dictated by Van and Ada, Ronald Oranger and Violet Knox, are themselves Ada’s grandchildren.