730 SEER, 8i, 4, 2003 Frustratingthough this is, it would be churlishnot to show full appreciation for the partial studies that Perlina has provided us with here. We have an English-language account of an original and productive thinker producing valuable work in the humanities in Stalin's Russia. Bakhtincan no longer be regarded as such an exception in the period, but merely a significant participantin a complex andproductiveintellectualdebatewith otherthinkers of a similar stature. While Freidenberg is here presented as another such oddity, a more accurate image of the intellectual scene has begun to form. Another fragment has come to light and we should now search for the principle of coherence that underlies the fragments that we have. Perlina's study presents valuable material for a reassessmentof the humanities in the Soviet Union in the dark years of the Stalin dictatorship that is only now beginning. Department ofRussian andSlavonic Studies CRAIG BRANDIST University ofSheffield Larmour, David H. J. (ed.). Discourse andIdeology inNabokov's Prose.Studies in Russian and European Literature, 7. Routledge Harwood Academic Publishers, London and New York, 2002. ix + I76 pp. Notes. Bibliography .Index. ?50.??. THIS volume brings together nine essays originally given as papers at the Texas Tech University conference, 'Discourse and Ideology in Vladimir Nabokov's Prose' in 1995. 'The call for papers for this conference', David Larmourexplains, 'wasan attemptto solicitreadingswhich would discussand expose the operationsof Nabokovian discourseand its ideological resonances, with special reference to gender and sexuality,politics and history,and social and culturalstructures'(p. 3). As these essaysdemonstrate,however, the ever elusive Nabokovian text remains largely resistant to such investigation. Interestingly,it is in the exposition of character,ratherthan in the elaboration of more generalized social and ideological concerns, where this approach proves to be most effective,suggestingthat, over and above his preoccupation with 'selfreflexivelinguisticgames' (p. 4), thisiswhereNabokov'struepriority lies. Brian Walter'sessay on BendSinister certainly bears this out. He interprets Nabokov's stance as 'sullen' (p. 27) and 'compromised' (p. 25), arguing that the novel's confrontational dynamic is generated by an 'overgrowth of [Nabokov's] own distaste for his rather simple political story' (p. 39). The experience of alienation that extends from Krug to the readeris, he proposes, a form of redirected 'insult',a 'painful,distancinglesson in the horrorsof the totalitarian state' (p. 40). As he also points out, however, readers have been faced with Nabokov's problematicand seemingly irresolvablecontention that the novel is not an intentionally political work. Of course, on one level it undeniably is, and yet to read it simply as an anti-communist or anti-fascist polemic is to ignore the highly personal element which Nabokov continually emphasized in his comments on the novel. Neither can it be considered in isolation. There are obvious parallels with earlier works, most explicitly, REVIEWS 73I Invitation toaBeheading, and the stories'TyrantsDestroyed' and 'Cloud, Castle, Lake', in which the protagonist's dilemma is amplified by either a realist or fantastical environment of ignorance, petty-mindedness and cruelty. Yet the dynamic of 'uncomfortableness'which Walter identifiesin BendSinister is key not only here, but acrossNabokov's entireoeuvre, asexpressiveof the subjective condition of many of his protagonists, quite distinct from their location in hostile worlds. Framed by sections on 'The Artist and Ideology' (which includes Brian Walter's essay and Galya Diment's attempt to redress the balance of Nabokov's relations with Edmund Wilson), and the concluding section, 'Cultural Contacts' (which considers Nabokov's impact on late twentiethcentury American culture),the focus of the volume centres on 'Discoursesof Gender and Sexuality' which also pertains to the section devoted to Lolita. These two sections combine to form the strongestpart of the book. The first three essays explore homosexual dimensions in 7he Eye, Glory,and PaleFire, whilst the two essays on Lolitapresent a long-overdue consideration of the absence of a female perspectivein the predominantlymale-orientedresponses to and consequent misreadings of Nabokov's most sexually controversial work. The homosexual theme is introduced by Galina Rylkova's analysis of 7he Eyein the light of the work offin-de-siecle Russian writer and poet, Mikhail Kuzmin. She argues that 'Kuzmin gave birth to Nabokov's archetypal character an ambivalent,sexuallyinverted,emigreloner whose strivings and misfortunes become the main...