Popular cinemas in East Central Europe: film cultures and histories

Abstract

make mistakes and their errors are portals of discovery’ (paraphrased in Lernout, 113). No doubt, Nabokov the writer is as ‘elusively present’ in his academic works as the subjects of his scholarly endeavour are ubiquitous in his fiction. But such subjectivity may be more of an asset than a liability here. Taken together, the various chapters in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature will convince the reader, professional or otherwise, about the truth of the afterword’s concluding remark. Indeed, Nabokov’s ‘lectures on Russian and European literature bring us as close as we can get to the impressively good reader that Nabokov definitely was’ (Pieters, 220). Let us hope that there still is room for good – or, for that matter, poor or indifferent – readers in this post-Gutenberg age of ours.