Liberal Ironists and the "Gaudily Painted Savage": On Richard Rorty's Reading of Vladimir Nabokov

Abstract

The essay on Nabokov in Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity2 is important not only as a record of a powerful mind's journey of discovery but also as an implicit recognition that despite, or because of, Nabokov's rejection of affiliations and engagement, his works have captured some major issues on the modem cultural agenda—even if in ways not congenial to Rorty. Here, however, after discussing Rorty's valuable contribution to Nabokov's studies, I shall have to record a disagreement with some of his statements, or rather "sentences," on Nabokov. Rorty may have expected some such protest. It is one of his central tenets that Truth does not exist "out there," beyond and apart from our