the anti-heroine of an era of bathtub gin, organized crime, and jazz, clouded in the smoke of fired guns and cigarettes.
He [Nabokov] also reminds us of the main reason it is so hard [for us to notice that other people are suffering]: we all spend a lot of time inventing people rather that noticing them, reshaping real people into characters in stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, stories about how beautiful and rare we are.
— Richard Rorty, Introduction to Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”
— Richard Rorty, Introduction to Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”