Humbert Humbert and Pnin: Vladimir Nabokov’s Two Authorial Selves (And Our Own)
Jonathan Lethem
Roy E. Disney ’51 Chair in Creative Writing
Pomona College
and
David Treuer
Professor of Literature and Creative Writing
USC
Claremont-based novelists David Treuer (Prudence) and Jonathan Lethem (Dissident Gardens) consider the different ways Vladimir Nabokov’s elusive self is simultaneously disclosed and shrouded from view in his treatment of his most arrogant protagonist, and his most retiring. In the process, Treuer and Lethem will disclose (and perhaps shroud) the tricky presence of their own “selves” in the narrational space of their respective fictions.
Jonathan Lethem is the author of nine novels, including Gun, With Occasional Music; The Fortress of Solitude; and, most recently, Dissident Gardens. Motherless Brooklyn, his fifth, won the National Book Critic’s Award, and has been translated into 25 languages. Lethem is also the author of three story collections, a novella, and a book of essays, The Disappointment Artist. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta and many other periodicals and anthologies. In 2005 he was awarded a fellowship by the MacArthur Foundation. He lives in Los Angeles and Maine.
David Treuer is Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the author of five books: three novels, a book of criticism, and the nonfiction book Rez Life. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, Esquire, TriQuarterly, and Lucky Peach, among other publications. His new novel, Prudence, will be published by Riverhead Books in the February of 2015.