Vladimir Nabokov

Lubin, Peter. Kickshaws and Motley. 1970

Author(s)
Bibliographic title
Kickshaws and Motley
Periodical or collection
Nabokov: Criticism, Reminiscences, Translations and Tributes
Page(s)
187-208
Publication year
Comment

Electronic reprint available in Zembla, 2004.

One of the best parodies of VN's style.

VN wrote: "The multicolored inklings offered by Mr. Lubin in his “Kickshaws and Motley” are absolutely dazzling. Such things as his “v ugloo” [Russ. for “in the corner”] in the igloo of the globe [a blend of “glow” and “strobe”] are better than anything I have done in that line. Very beautifully he tracks down to their lairs in Eliot three terms queried by a poor little person in Pale Fire. I greatly admire the definition of tmesis (Type I) as a “semantic petticoat slipped on between the naked noun and its clothing epithet,” as well as Lubin’s “proleptic” tmesis illustrated by Shakespeare’s glow-worm beginning “to pale his ineffectual fire.” And the parody of an interview with N. (though a little more exquisitely iridized than my own replies would have been) is sufficiently convincing to catch readers."