The Centennial Omnibus

230 Nabokov Studies parable to Riefenstahl's "stylistic excuse" for her ideologically rife films of the 1930s. Humbert's is a mock epiphany intended as an amelioration for Quilty's murder, and this trick is Nabokov's test for the reader, his subtle condemnation of Humbert's immorality. Interesting, indeed, but if Andrews' book has a primary fault, it is that the author's sense of morality is too clear. This moral certitude, while focusing the lucidly presented ethical arguments, limits the scope of Andrews' discussion on aesthetics and ethics. Andrews powerfully argues for a close, responsive reading, which echoes Nabokov's Afterword to Lolita by calling for an "aesthetic bliss" rooted in "curiosity, tenderness, kindness, and ecstasy." Andrews has undertaken the very difficult task of "describing the ethical intersections of theme, technique, and perception," not prevaricating in the least when the discussion arrives at pedophilia, rape, and murder, and has managed to produce a strongly argued and useful book on Nabokov as an aesthete, the ethics of "aesthetic bliss," and the perils of cinematic adaptation. Aestheticism, Nabokov and Lolita is doubtless an invaluable resource for students and newer readers of Lolita who feel misled or entrapped by the "prettiness" of Humbert's prose and for those curious readers who are dissatisfied with old arguments that aesthetics and style can legitimize immoral and destructive behaviour, that style, as Trevor McNeely writes, "can do anything." The Centennial Omnibus Zoran Kuzmanovich, Davidson College Neil Cornwell. Writers and Their Work: Vladimir Nabokov. Plymouth, U.K.: Northcote House (in association with the British Council), 1999. xvii+142 pp. ISBN: 074630868X. Sarah Funke. Vera's Butterflies, ed. Glenn Horowitz. New York: Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, Inc., 1999. Available in paperback, $75; cloth, with "Revised Evidence" stamps designed by Barbara Bloom, $125; stamps alone, $45. 271 pp. ISBN: 0965402010. Christine Clegg, ed. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism. Cambridge, U.K.: Icon Books, 2000. 176 pp. ISBN: 184046173x. Steven H. Gale, ed. The Films of Harold Pinter. Albany: SUNY, 2001. xi + 188 pp. ISBN: 0791449319. Marleen Gorris, dir. The Luzhin Defence. Sony Pictures Classics, 2000. 106 minutes. PG-13. With John Turturro (Luzhin), Emily Watson (Natalia), Reviews 231 Geraldine James (Vera), Stuart Wilson (Valentinov), Christopher Thompson (Stassard), Fabio Sartor (Turati) and Alexander Hunting (young Luzhin). Alexander Semochkin. Nabokov's Paradise Lost: The Family Estates in Russia. St. Petersburg: Liga Plus Publishers, 1999. 128 pp. ISBN: 5-932940034. We are now three years past the time of Cornell University's wonderful Nabokov Centenary Festival, but the Nabokoviana connected to the centennial continues to come in at a rate that may very well make us think of a centenary as less like a year and more like a decade-long moveable feast. Nabokov's writings are still being gathered and honored, as in Nabokov's Butterflies, and there have been monographs, collections, catalogs, guides, and records of proceedings devoted to his work. Couched among them are special issues and parts of special issues. Selected for review here are noteworthy examples of meditations on the art of Nabokov's thought. There is little logic to my selections. This omnibus review, originally intended as a "Briefly Noted" column, has now transformed itself into what frequenters of American cafeterias broadly term "the mystery meal" and what tourists to Irish abbeys may encounter as "resurrection pudding," a dish concocted from mixed sweets left over from several meals. The one notable element of such meals is that despite the impurity of their origins, they waste little and occasionally may even taste good. Neil Cornwell is Slavic specialist whose Reference Guide to Russian Literature should be on any serious Nabokovian's shelf. Given the thoroughness of that work, the reader should not be surprised that Cornwell's introduction to Nabokov 's work is also remarkably complete even though he has of necessity ignored Nabokov's plays and poetry. The completeness comes from Cornwell's vast knowledge and trustworthy tone, a trust deepened by his unfailingly superb eye for nipping the quotation most likely to display his understanding of the conceptual richness and metaphorical suggestiveness of Nabokov's prose. Cornwell 's own prose sparkles with quiet bon mots: he describes Nabokov's...