H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e2 0 0It is not quite the gunfight at the OK Corral. On the contrary, it
is one of the most disturbingly quirky descriptions of a murder
in the history of English literature. What makes it so grotesque is
the tension between the shooting itself and the absurdly prissy
way in which the victim reacts to it. It is as though Quilty is
performing for an audience, rather as the novel itself is doing. He
is able to assume a British accent even while his blood leaks on to
the stairs. Just as Nabokov’s own style in the previous passage
detaches itself with ironic amusement from what it is describing, so
Quilty persists with his smirkings and courteously archaic phrases
(‘I pray you, desist’) even as the narrator’s bullets rip him apart. In
both cases, there is a discrepancy between the reality and how it is
presented.
The narrator’s style in this passage is as dissociated from the
bloody event as the victim himself. There is a shocking contrast
between the fury and despair which drive him to murder and the
primly abstract language (‘to a phenomenal altitude’) in which he
portrays the incident. Even as he is pumping bullet after bullet into
his antagonist, he cannot resist a cultural allusion to a renowned
Russian dancer (‘like old, grey, mad Nijinski’). The way Quilty is
thrown through the air by the impact of the shot is wittily converted
into a graceful leap in ballet, rather as the extract itself converts a
squalid slaying into art of the highest order. One notes the beauti-
fully, comically understated touch ‘somewhat morose’, as though
Quilty’s reaction to being filled with lead is to feel a bit down in the
mouth. ‘as if I were tickling him’ is another splendid piece of under-
statement. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the whole
passage is that it was written by an author whose first language was
not English.