My new tattoo!

i suppose one way of answering this question is to first of all speculate about what fiction nabokov admired and enjoyed from other writers. i’d say he liked (a) fiction that indulged in what he was also interested in (i.e. the workings of consciousness, time, fate, the otherworldly pattern of life, cruelty, subjectivity etc) and (b) fiction that tested the boundaries of stylistic invention (VN being a believer in a kind of hegelian dialectic of art in which art is renewed over and over by newer forms of innovation). so from this very minor and brief explanation i think two modern writers VN would have at least enjoyed or gotten something out of are william gass and maybe john banville maybe not. here i am thinking specifically of gass’ the tunnel and other works and banville’s the sea. gass’ work is spectacular and exactly the kind of aesthetic thrill VN tried to capture in his own work and i think a lot of gass’ ideas or certainly his philosophical poses align with VN’s to a good extent. banville’s the sea, however, is a bit of a wild card for me. while banville engages with a lot of the themes up above and the melody of its style is obvious and very successful i feel mixed about it as a book, let alone one nabokov would have liked.