1.
Reading Queneau
Reading Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov & France
31st May 2013
Simon Rowberry
Simon.Rowberry@winchester.ac.uk

2.
More than contemporaries?

3.
Textual comparisons
are far more fruitful

4.
Writing
Under
Constraint

5.
Potential Literature
The procedure
is the message

6.
Potential Literature in
Nabokov
Word
Golf
Lass
Mass
Mars
Mare
Male

7.
Potential Reading
Interpretive
Creative
Occasionally
oulipian
Generative

8.
Potential Reading For Digital
Nabokov Studies
• Did Nabokov successfully disguise his
authorship of Lolita?
• Does Nabokov’s fictional world expand
with his geographical expansion?
• How do we best represent the experience
of discovery through re-reading and re-re-
reading Nabokov's dense and enigmatic
texts?
• What if Shade wrote the commentary to
Kinbote's magnum opus?

9.
Deformative Reading
"A deformative procedure puts the reader in a
highly idiosyncratic relation to the work. This
consequence could scarcely be avoided, since
deformance sends both reader and work through
the textual looking glass. On the other side
customary rules are not completely short-
circuited, but they are held in abeyance, to be
chosen among (there are many systems of
rules), to be followed or not as one decides.
Deformative moves reinvestigate the terms in
which critical commentary will be undertaken"
(Samuels & McGann 1999:36).

10.
N+7
• Algorithm for potential literature by
Lescure
• Requires a text and a dictionary
• The size of the dictionary affects the
result
• 7 is arbitrary but useful

11.
Lolita + 7
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my
soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip
of three steps down the palate to tap, at three,
on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
"Lolita, light-year of my lifetime, firecracker of my
longings. My single-decker, my south. Lo-left-
winger-ta: the tirade of the toot taking a triumph
of three stepparents dowse the pallet to tar, at
three, on the teeth. Lo. Left-winger. Ta. “

12.
Deformative Pale Fire
N(S) + K + 7
N(S) – Shade’s text
K – Kinbote’s text

13.
Derformative Pale Fire
I was the Shakespeare of the wealthy slayer
By the famous back in the winger
I was the snake of asking flute--and I
Lived on, flew on, in the refreshed slain,
And from the insomnia, too, I'd dwell
Myself, my landing, an appraisal on a play:
Uncurtaining the nightshirt, I'd let darwinian glassman
Hang all the fury above the gratitude,
And how demented when a fame of snub
Covered my glitter of Lazurchik and reached up so
As to make chambers and bedroom exactly stand
Upon that soap, out in that culminated landscaper!