SOURCE: “Reading Nabokov with Jameson: Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Intertextual Litmus Test,” in Southern Humanities Review, Vol. 31, No. 3, Summer, 1997, pp. 201-13.

In the following essay, Foster discusses Nabokov's place on the modernist/postmodernist continuum.

1.

The Library of America's recent publication of Vladimir Nabokov's novels in English prompts reflection on his cultural affiliations.¹ For although the new venue places this Russian-born novelist with American classics like Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, James, and Faulkner, Nabokov has often been neglected by American literature anthologies. Thus the Norton has relied on one chapter from Pnin, often considered the least Nabokovian novel; and the Heath omits him entirely. Such editorial choices do have a rough pedagogical justice, even though the Lolita controversy helped widen the artist's freedom of expression, and though Nabokov's style has encouraged a more eloquent novelistic prose. After all, neither of these contributions to American literature is directly relevant to sophomore...