Authorship in Nabokovs Prefaces

Whereas literary criticism has mainly oscillated between the death of the author (Barthes) and the return of the author (Couturier), this work suggests another perspective on authorship through an analysis of Nabokovs prefaces. It is here argued that the author, being neither dead nor tyrannical, alternates between authoritative apparitions and receding disappearances in the double gesture of mastery without mastery which Derrida calls exappropriation, that is, a simultaneous attempt to appropriate ones work, control it, have it under ones power and expropriate it, losing control by loosening ones grip. The intention of this is to approach, through ones experience of reading and interpreting, the experience of self-effacement and impersonality pertaining to writing (cf. Blanchot). Prefaces are considered to be suitable places for the deconstruction of the classical image of Nabokovs arrogance through the unearthing of his reserve and vulnerability. This work provides an account of the mere intuition (which, therefore, does not pretend to be a conclusive and definitive interpretation) of another image of Nabokov whose undeniable talent for deception seems in accordance with a need for discretion and secrecy. See more