One of the things that always strike me when I read VN's novels lies in his frequent attribution of human qualities and intentions to inanimate objects. It adds a special kind of cartoon-like motion and whimsy to his writings. It used to be rather excessive at first (for example, in his Russian novel "King Queen Knave"), but it added speed, humor and vigor to his descriptions.

I never examined them in detail, but my impression is that this particular form of "personification" is absent from his later, American, novels ( I'm thinking of "Pale Fire" and "Ada"), although it usually works well in English and, I suppose, in any other language.

If this lack of personification in VN's later novels should be confirmed, could this mean that he abandoned a link with Russian folklore and fairy tales, his spiritualistic beliefs or substituted their magic for a different kind of conjuring act?

A quick, incomplete, sampling:

RLSK: "This was particularly the case with the low, white-robed armchair near the bed; I wondered what it had stolen. Then by groping in the recesses of its reluctant folds I found something hard: it turned out to be a Brazil nut, and the armchair again folding its arms resumed its inscrutable expression (which might have been one of contemptuous dignity)".

Pnin: "a maze of doubtful roads [  ] It [Timofey's blue sedan] moved warily and unsteadily, and whenever it changed its mind, it would slow down." (it made me think of Ben Okri's "The famished road"*...)

 

 

Transparent Things: "Now flames were mounting the stairs, in pairs, in trios, in redskin file, hand in hand, tongue after tongue, conversing and humming happily. It was not, though, the heat of their flicker, but the acrid dark smoke that caused Person to retreat back into the room; excuse me, said a polite flamelet holding open the door he was vainly trying to close."

 

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* excerpt from wikipedia: "Okri's work is particularly difficult to categorize. Although it has been widely categorized as post-modern, some scholars have noted that the seeming realism with which he depicts the spirit-world challenges this categorization. If Okri does attribute reality to a spiritual world, it is claimed, then his "allegiances are not postmodern [because] he still believes that there is something ahistorical or transcendental conferring legitimacy on some, and not other, truth-claims." Alternative characterizations of Okri's work suggest an allegiance to Yoruba folklore, New Ageism, spiritual realism, magical realism, visionary materialism, and existentialism.
Against these analyses, Okri has always rejected the categorization of his work as magical realism, claiming that this categorization is the result of laziness on the part of critics and likening this categorization to the observation that "a horse ... has four legs and a tale. That doesn’t describe it." He has instead described his fiction as obeying a kind of 'dream logic,' and stated that his fiction is often preoccupied with the 'philosophical conundrum ... what is reality?'."