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

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"the 'Ardis' part of the book", which, it says, have
no equal in world literature ("save maybe Count
Tolstoy's reminiscences"), praising also the "spanking
pace" at which the novel proceeds, and sending the
reader scrambling back in search of the details which
it counts among the "adornment[s] of the chronicle"
(588-589). The family tree, ostensibly included to
help the reader get the relations between the characters
straight, not only does not provide this help
but is actually misleading, and it wickedly confirms
the wrong conclusions of those readers who are not
among Fowler's Nabokov specialists; who are either
not used to the author's tricks and therefore do not
watch out for and collect and piece together the inconspicuous
hints and clues that establish the real
relations, or who do not have "a great deal of time"
and therefore simply miss them. The family tree makes
Van and Ada appear to be first cousins, whereas a
careful collation of dates and place names and other
hints reveals them to be brother and sister - offspring
of Marina and Demon's affair - which the clever
children themselves realize quite early in the novel.
Within the brackets that these two parodies at
the beginning and at the end provide, there are a
great many others. "Old story-telling devices', said
Van, 'may be parodied only by very great and inhuman
artists... "' (246), and he evidently takes himself
for one, for he parodies them all. Into the construction
of his story goes