self-consciousness

Erik Eklund (1991–) is a Research Scholar with the Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) Research Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought, and Adjunct Professor at Northwest University (Kirkland, WA), where he teaches in the Department of English and the College of Ministry. His primary areas of research and inquiry include literature and religion, literary reflexivity, and Nabokov studies, with a particular interest in authorial identity, unreliability, and indeterminacy.

Robert Alter (1935-  ), professor of Comparative Literature and Hebrew at University of California, Berkeley, is one of the most distinguished academic stylists and deep analysts of style to write about Nabokov, both in his own works and in relation to the traditions of self-conscious fiction. A friend and office-mate of Alfred Appel, Jr., in his early academic career, he responded to Appel's invitation to contribute to the 1970 Triquarterly Festschrift for VN's seventieth birthday.

Alfred Appel, Jr (1934-2009) was a student in Nabokov's European fiction class at Cornell, where he met his wife, Nina. After a PhD on Willa Cather, and his appointment at Northwestern University, Appel turned to Nabokov, focusing especially on his self-consciousness and metafictionality, particularly in "Nabokov's Puppet Show," a long article in the New Republic (14 and 21 January 1967), which became the basis for his memorable Introduction to the Annotated Lolita (1970).