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

-
320
-
only a limited number of such stock responses and
habits and views as are traditionally attributed to
persons like him.
Nabokov quite rightly warns the reader in his Foreword
that the plot of the novel "is not quite as familiar
as the writer of the rude letter in Chapter
Eleven assumes it to be. "25 Its mere surface events,
of course are familiar and can be categorized to-'
gether with those of Lydia's trashy novels; the connection
is actually established several times (34,151).
But behind this surface Despair has turned out to be
yet another novel about the relation between art and
reality and to anticipate much of what Nabokov elaborates
on in his much later novels.
11