Nabokov and the Detective Novel
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CATHARINE THEIMER NEPOMNYASHCHY NABOKOV AND THE DETECTIVE NOVEL atharine Theimer Nepomnyash- was left unfinished at her death. Cathy chy, Ann Whitney Olin Profes- proposed to investigate more thoroughly sor of Russian Literature and and inventively Nabokov’s enemies (Freud, C Culture, Barnard College, and Pasternak, the detective novel) to see former director of the Harriman Institute, whether his blistering invective obfuscated died on March 21 of this year. (An obitu- a deeper engagement with said enemies. ary is printed at the end of the magazine.) Although we can only guess at the work’s Cathy first taught the Nabokov survey at final shape, conference papers from 2010 Columbia in the fall of 2007 (I remember onwards offer glimpses of a potential table because I taught the second class), and the of contents: Nabokov and Pasternak; following year she published her first arti- Pale Fire and Doctor Zhivago: A Case of cle on Nabokov, “King, Queen, Sui-mate: Intertextual Envy; Ada and Bleak House ; Nabokov’s Defense Against Freud’s Un- Nabokov and Austen; Nabokov and the canny” (Intertexts, Spring 2008), the first Art of Attack. brick of what was planned to be “Nabokov The essay that follows is what we and His Enemies,” which unfortunately have of the second brick of Cathy’s 48 | HARRIMAN FEATURED INTRODUCTION BY RONALD MEYER work-in-progress, “Revising Nabokov needs to keep in mind that what follows is Revising the Detective Novel: Vladimir, a conference presentation and that Cathy Agatha, and the Terms of Engagement,” was writing within the constraints of time which Cathy presented at the 2010 Inter- and length, but one cannot but regret its national Nabokov Conference, sponsored preliminary state and wonder what was to by the Nabokov Society of Japan and the come in a fully expanded version. Japan Foundation, Kyoto. The detective The essay appears in the volume novel was a natural point of departure and Revising Nabokov Revising. The Proceedings comparison for Cathy (as was Pasternak, of the International Nabokov Conference, one of the authors she wrote about in her March 24–27, 2010, Kyoto, Japan, edited dissertation and a figure to whom she by Mitsuyoshi Numano and Tadashi Véra and Vladimir would return regularly throughout her Wakashima, and published by the Nabokov play chess career). An avid reader of detective novels Nabokov Society of Japan. We gratefully on the balcony of the Montreux Palace both classic and contemporary, Cathy thank the editors and James Theimer, Hotel (1966) had once taught a first-year seminar on Cathy’s brother, for permission to detective fiction at Barnard. The reader reprint this essay. HARRIMAN | 49 Revising Nabokov Revising the Detective Novel: Vladimir, Agatha, and the Terms of Engagement By Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy There are some varieties of fiction that I reclaim literature from them. The “terms never touch—mystery stories, for instance, of engagement” were far from superficial which I abhor...1 or frivolous, but complex “combinations” through which Nabokov worked out The present paper forms part of a larger in his own terms the question of what Shot of project, now in its early stages, which literature is. In this installment I will test Nepomnyashchy I have tentatively titled “Nabokov and this hypothesis against a writer, as the His Enemies.” As we all know, Nabokov foremost representative of a genre, whom, was far from reticent about expressing as my epigraph reads, Nabokov professed his evaluations of other writers, many of to “abhor”—Agatha Christie. them distinctly and repeatedly negative. While Nabokov may have claimed In this context we may concede that even that he “never touch[ed]” mystery professional critics and literary theorists stories, attentive readers of Lolita (or when they broach the issue of influence of Alfred Apfel’s Annotated Lolita) will or intertextuality tend to presuppose have remarked that one of the few books Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy that texts “interact” with works their listed among the holdings of the library of authors like—or at least profess to like. the prison in which Humbert Humbert Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” is incarcerated is Agatha Christie’s A most readily comes to mind. In contrast, Murder Is Announced. This detail has I contend that we can learn a great deal been noted among the many “clues” about Nabokov specifically and about the Nabokov plants in the early pages of the complicated interactions among texts in novel to what is to come, bait for readers general by studying the terms in which and delectation for rereaders who delight Nabokov engages in his fictions the in catching the hints missed on a first writings of authors he claims vehemently read. Yet upon due consideration there is to detest. (In this context, you will hardly every reason to believe that, despite his find it surprising that my first chapter is denial, Nabokov did in fact read Christie’s devoted to the “Viennese witchdoctor” Miss Marple novel, which came out in Freud.) The book will ultimately be 1950 as Nabokov was working on Lolita. made up of a series of case studies, based In the simplest terms, A Murder Is on which I argue that Nabokov, acutely Announced rests on a clever deception, a aware that the sophisticated pleasures he confusion of identities that, when unrav- ascribed to literature were threatened by eled at the end, reveals that the victim is the fabric of twentieth-century culture, in fact the murderer. What then if we go confronted in his writings precisely those past the sly joke of planting “a murder is cultural products for which he expressed announced” toward the beginning of the most profound contempt in order to Lolita, announcing that a murder will take 50 | HARRIMAN FEATURED place, and assume that Nabokov’s own a certain G. Abeson, artdealer, is gradually wiped out and the boarding plot, in which the identities of murderer found murdered in his room. The house motif is painlessly and smoothly and victim are confounded, resonates local police officer … rings up a replaced by that of a country-house, significantly with Christie’s? London detective, asking him to with all its natural implications. And Before attempting to answer this ques- come at once … In the meantime the here the tale takes on a strange beauty. tion, let us look at yet another instance inhabitants of the boarding house plus [...] Here the lives of the characters in which Nabokov clearly incorporates a a chance passer-by, old Nosebag, who shine forth with a real and human Christie plot into his own text—belying happened to be in the lobby when significance and G. Abeson’s sealed his claim never to touch the stuff. In the crime was committed, are thor- door is but that of a forgotten lum- Nabokov’s first novel composed directly oughly examined. All of them except ber-room. A new plot, a new drama in English, The Real Life of Sebastian the last-named, a mild old gentleman utterly unconnected with the opening Knight, Nabokov not only toys with the with a white beard yellowish about of the story, which is thus thrust back basic mechanisms of the detective novel, the mouth, and a harmless passion for into the region of dreams, seems to but again appears to invoke a specific collecting snuffboxes, are more or less struggle for existence and break into Christie text (or even texts). Here let me open to suspicion; [...] Then, with a light. But at the very moment when repeat with judicious cuts the narrator’s quick sliding motion, something in the reader feels quite safe in an paraphrase of Sebastian Knight’s first the story begins to shift (the detective, atmosphere of pleasurable reality novel, The Prismatic Bezel: it must be remembered, is still on the and the grace and glory of the author’s way and G. Abeson’s stiff corpse lying prose seems to indicate some lofty Twelve persons are staying at a board- on the carpet). It gradually transpires and rich intention, there is a gro- ing house; the house is very carefully that all the lodgers are in various ways tesque knocking on the door and the depicted but in order to stress the connected with one another. [...] detective enters.[...] The lodgers are “island” note, … One of the lodgers, then the numbers on the doors are examined afresh. [...] Old Nosebag HARRIMAN | 51 Left to right : Louis Hayward, C. Aubrey Smith, Barry Fitzgerald, Richard Haydn, Mischa Auer and Walter Huston in the filmAnd Then There Were None (1945), based on the novel by Agatha Christie potters about [...]. The old gag of novel, the narrator of The Real Life tainly reflect “strong opinions” worthy making the most innocent looking of Sebastian Knight, V., observes that of the author himself): person turn out to be the master-villain The Prismatic Bezel conflates “a seems to be on the point of being rollicking parody of the setting of a With something akin to fanatical exploited. The sleuth suddenly gets detective tale” with the modern novel’s hate Sebastian Knight was ever interested in snuffboxes. [...] There “fashionable trick of grouping a medley hunting out the things which had was a moment of ridiculous suspense. of people in a limited space (a hotel, once been fresh and bright but “I think,” said Old Nosebag quietly, an island, a street).”4 In his remarks which were now worn to a thread, “that I can explain.” Slowly and very following his summary, the narrator dead things among living ones; dead carefully he removes his beard, his concludes that his half-brother’s novel things shamming life, painted and gray wig, his dark spectacles, and is a “new” book rather than a “nice repainted, continuing to be accepted the face of G.