The Real Life of Sebastian Knight   ::   Набоков Владимир Владимирович

The first of these stories (which Mr Goodman considers to be extremely typical of 'post-war undergraduate life} depicts Sebastian showing a girl friend from London the sights of Cambridge. 'And this is the Dean's window,' he said; then smashing the pane with a stone, he added: 'And this is the Dean.' Needless to say that Sebastian has been pulling Mr Goodman's leg: the story is as old as the University itself.

Let us look at the second one. During a short vacation trip to Germany (1921? 1922?) Sebastian, one night, being annoyed by the caterwauls in the street, started to pelt the offenders with miscellaneous objects including an egg. Presently, a policeman knocked at his door, bringing back all these objects minus the egg.

This is from an old (or, as Mr Goodman would say, pre-war') Jerome K. Jerome book. Leg-pulling again.

Third story: Sebastian speaking of his very first novel (unpublished and destroyed) explained that it was about a fat young student who travels home to find his mother married to his uncle; this uncle, an ear-specialist, had murdered the student's father.

Mr Goodman misses the joke.

Fourth: Sebastian in the summer of 1922 had overworked himself and, suffering from hallucinations, used to see a kind of optical ghost – a black-robed monk moving swiftly towards him from the sky.

This is a little harder: a short story by Chekhov.

Fifth:

But I think we had better stop, or else Mr Goodman might be in danger of becoming a centipede. Let us have him remain quadrupedal. I am sorry for him, but it cannot be helped. And if only he had not padded and commented these 'curious incidents and fancies' so ponderously, with such a rich crop of deductions! Churlish, capricious, mad Sebastian, struggling in a naughty world of Juggernauts, and aeronauts, and naughts, and what-nots…. Well, well, there may be something in all that.

I want to be scientifically precise. I should hate being baulked of the tiniest particle of truth only because at a certain point of my search I was blindly enraged by a trashy concoction…. Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight? His former secretary. Were they ever friends? No – as we shall see later. Is there anything real or possible in the contrast between a frail eager Sebastian and a wicked tired world? Not a thing. Was there perhaps some oilier kind of chasm, breach, fissure? There was.