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

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a few examples out of a great many more; and there
are instances when Nabokov (through Van) does indeed
perform some of the "semiprivate executions" that
worry Fowler, such as when he mocks at Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago by turning it into "Les Amours du
Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor" (55).
"Mertvago", as C. Proffer explains, means "dead", whereas
"Zhivago" in the real title means "alive", "living",
and there is, of course the parody of the religious
concerns of the novel.
19
D. H. Lawrence is abolished
together with the author of Fanny Hill: "... the chatter,
the lays and the fannies of rotting pornographers...
" (270); T. S. Eliot is ridiculed (505-506),
and G. L. Borges appears as "Osberg (Spanish writer of
pretentious fairy-tales and mystico-allegoric anecdotes,
highly esteemed by short-shift thesalists)"
(344).
However, Van is not always so outspoken about his
parodies; the reader and critic has to spot them for
himself. Alfred Appel has pointed out that the "thorny"
first three chapters "surely parody the reassuring
initial pages of those traditional novels... which prepare
the reader for the story about to unfold by
supplying him with the neat and complete psychological,
social, and moral pre-histories of fictional
characters.,,
20
The three chapters do proyide glimpses
of the pre-histories of the characters, but they do
anything but unfold these histories neatly. They require
the "rereader", invoked on page nineteen, to
disentangle the complicated genealogy, made all the