Emily Collins sent us her abstract
about "Nabokov's animate objects" where she wrote: "Both fetish and portal are problematic: they tend to
over-determine the world, leaving no room for the true quiddity of things or
people".
I selected the sentence quoted
above as a representative of what surprised me in her text.
In the first place, what is "a
portal" in literature? ( EC defined it as: "an object
which magically transports someone to a different realm", but
this seems to stamp it as something operative outside games and sci-fi
unlike, say, Pullman's "Subtle Knife" for those that read about it in
his novel.);
2. Who animates Nabokov's
objects, or are they indeed "animate"? ;
3. How do fetish and portal
over-determine the world... leave no room...etc?