BOOKS
NABOKOV'S RAINBOW
LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS .
By
Vladimir Nabokov. McGraw-HilI.
$7 .95 .
"But I ," says Count Ludovico, "imagining with my selfe often
times how this grace commeth, leaving apart such as have it from above, finde
one rule that is most generall , which in this part (me thinke) taketh place in all
things belonging to a man in word and deede , above all other. And that is to
eschue as much as a man may, and as a sharp and daungerous rocke, too much
curiousness, and (to speake a new word) to use in everye thing a certain
disgracing to cover arte withall, and seeme whatsoever he doth and saith , to
doe it without paine , and (as it were) not minding it ." This admonition in
The Book of the Courtier
comes readily to mind as one reads
Look at the
Harlequins
and watches the novel break on that sharp and dangerous rock. For
Nabokov's diffident style with its casually brilliant asides and sudden tropes
has always reflected Castiglione's understanding of
sprezzatura ,
artless art,
and yet, since
Ada
and particularly in this novel, Nabokov has seemed
trapped in the ingenuity of his curiousness. The ease with which he sets scenes
and introduces characters (or removes them with the crack of a pistol) has
become increasingly mechanical ; it is not surprise but familiarity that has
come to matter in his fiction, and as a result his wit has begun to wear, to show
signs of garrulity.
Look at the Harlequins
is the farcical recitation of Nabokov's literary
career, a synoptic retelling of old Nabokovian tales that is at times excessively
rich in its self-indulgence. "In the world of athletic games there has never
been , I think ," Vadim McNab observes , "a World Champion ofLawn Tennis
andSki ;
yet in two Literatures, as dissimilar as grass and snow , I have been the
first to achieve that kind of feat ." But there is a difference in showing and
telling . The feat of this novel, it would seem , is to be superb in certain
episodes and passages and to fail overall as a fiction . As McNab hustles his rep
in
Look at the Harlequins ,
the line between funny arrogance and preening
narcissism is not always discernible. How would Castiglione have regarded the
