Memory on its own terms …

… Speaking of Memory: Nabokov’s Folded Fabric | The Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

This is a deeply skeptical exploration of our attempts, in a spinning world of evolving phenomena, to define a fixed, concrete Self, to define anything in stasis; that is, it is less concerned with how a character moves through time than how time flows through a singular consciousness. And the book is filled with moments like this — of Nabokov pointing and saying, “Look at that! Can you believe that?” He is not making a case for a post-Einstein universe; he’s discovering that universe with a childlike delight, and inviting the reader to discover it with him.