Robert Alter on Nabokov’s Literary Invention
March 17, 2021
Vladimir Nabokov remains one of the most polarizing of the major novelists who have written in English. His admirers are passionate about him. These include both critics and many novelists in England, America, and elsewhere. Some gestures of imitation have been made by other writers, though as is generally the case with writers of the first order of originality Proust and Kafka come to mind these efforts have not been very successful. On the opposing side, there are some readers who cannot abide Nabokov, finding little in his work but coy literary devices, mannered or overwrought prose, and a pervasive archness.