Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

Barbara Wyllie (University College London)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1972

Places

Russia (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Transparent Things was published in 1972, two years before Nabokov’s last novel, Look at the Harlequins!. Following on from the exotic epic Ada (1969), Transparent Things seems at first to be obtusely slight and inconsequential, its twenty-six chapters comprising, in the American Vintage edition, just over 100 pages. The novel’s hero, Hugh Person, pales in the shadow cast by Ada’s decadent and extravagant protagonists. Unlike the sophisticated and manipulative Van Veen, he is a “sentimental simpleton”, a misfit, a man persistently out of his depth, afflicted by irrational fears and compromised at every turn.

Set alternately in New York and Witt, a small ski resort in the …

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2068 words

Citation: Wyllie, Barbara. "Transparent Things". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 November 2006 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8434, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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