''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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share", as a good biographer should.
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His worst blunders V commits when he comes to the
period during which Sebastian lived together with
Clare Bishop. Clare is alive and V knows where she
lives. He goes there and allows himself to be sent
away by her husband. He sees her in the street, and
does not make himself known to her. In Sebastian's
flat he burnt her letters together with those of the
unknown Russian woman, now he lets the most important
and knowledgeable witness of six years go by unquestioned.
His motive may be praiseworthy although it
is none too clear. Whatever it is, the consequences
for his work are disastrous. It degenerates into a
mixture of second-hand information and, what is worse,
conjecture and speculation, innocent of "'authentic
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information' from which... good biography is made. "
There is a longish passage that looks somewhat like
an objective (even though second-hand) account of
those particular six years in Sebastian's life. Clare
is described, a sensible and sensitive young woman
who apparently fitted perfectly into Sebastian's life,
who helped him in many ways and with whom, it seems,
he was happy. He wrote his first three books during
the six years he lived with her. There is some first
indication of his illness; then, after a period during
which Sebastian seemed strangely moody and unpredictable,
it became necessary for him to spend some time
at Blauberg. And after his return from there, we
learn, Sebastian inexplicably stopped taking any