Stanley Wells, rev. of Arthur Phillips, The Tragedy of Arthur.  The New York Review of Books 58.16  27 October 2011. 63-66:

 

                “[. . . ] Arthur Phillips’s wonderfully intricate, Nabokovian novel The Tragedy of Arthur composed in the form of an edition [. . .] of a previously unknown Shakespeare play [. . . ]” (63).   The Tragedy of Arthur is an invented text surrounded by academic, or faux-academic, commentary.  (I have obtained The Tragedy of Arthur but have not yet had the time to read it.)

 

Wells’s “Nabokovian” primarily alludes to Pale Fire, of course, but I think The Tragedy of Arthur also harkens back to Bend Sinister, IMO Nabokov’s most underappreciated work.  Bend Sinister’s Chapter 7, in the guise of anti-Stalinist satire, contains a delightful parody of Hamlet, which, BTW, antedates Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.  And whenever academic parody arises, perhaps there is a distant connection to Pnin.

 

Eric Hyman

Professor of English

Assistant Chair

Graduate Coordinator

Department of English

Fayetteville State University

1200 Murchison Road

Fayetteville, NC 28301-4252

(910) 672-1901

ehyman@uncfsu.edu