The revulsion that Humbert Humbert feels towards the awful Haze woman is thrown into relief by the leering delight he takes in the lovely Lo, whose every limb and gesture proves an ode to beauty. The protagonist of Look at the Harlequins shares Humbert's desire for the perfect detail but reiterates it in less carnal terms, marveling at his new bride's facility with the soft-boiled egg. And what the protagonist admires, a reader might suspect, the author admires as well. Look at the Harlequins is the faux autobiography of a Russian-American novelist named Vadim Vadimovich, whose biography closely resembles Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov's. The protagonist traces his beginnings as a writer to his great-aunt's command to stop moping and look at the harlequins.
Trees are harlequins, words are harlequins.
So are situations and sums. But paradoxically, the more evidence we have for a biography of Nabokov the author, the less we have for the life of Nabokov the man. His eccentrically large capacity for joy, his idiosyncratic ability to experience bliss made him unable to tolerate the reality of suffering. The Nabokov on display on Fifth Avenue suggests that Rorty may be onto something. Frankly I would prefer not to publish the story at all if it must be so curiously heartlessly carefully mutilated.