Transparent Things, Re-reading, and the Good

• In Event: New Approaches to Nabokov’s Transparent Things

Abstract

In what way does Transparent Things reflect on and possibly ironize Nabokov’s injunction upon his reader to re-read, in order to be “good”? I will consider this question by examining the various ways in which the act of re-reading structures this text. For one, I will reflect on the notion of the book as a “transparent thing” that becomes so only once it has been re-read. For another, I will consider acts of re-reading that take place internally in the text Finally, I’d like to consider how the text ironically re-reads various Nabokovian tropes and characters (for example, Mr. R. as a riff on Humbert Humbert; Armande as a riff on quite a few women in Nabokov’s texts; and Person as a riff on Nabokov’s variously hapless, grotesque, impotent males.)

Author

• Pavel Khazanov, Rutgers, The State U of New Jersey