Jansy,
Dmitri’s remark that “it remains dangerous to take VN’s chance, or
planted, clues at face value” is superb advice, and seems to me to be
of a family with taking a strictly literal interpretation of language,
especially colloquial expressions and word choices, in VN’s work.
I remember, specifically, in the Vlodya/Bunny letters, Wilson advised
VN against using the phrase “brought down the house” in describing the
series of sounds that transpired, in Pnin, when an elderly man gets up
at night, visits the bathroom, and flushes the toilet. Wilson gravely
explains that bringing down the house refers to applause in American
English, stolidly unaware that VN understood this perfectly and was
making an exceedingly clever, multi-leveled play on words by using it
as he did. (This is in the chapter in which Victor arrives for his
first visit to his “water father.”)
So, along with not taking VN’s clues at face value, I’m also
disinclined to set aside the uncomfortable words, such as absurd, from
either Nabokov father or son.
Andrew