Nabokov in Three Years discussion

This novel immediately put me in mind of Orson Welles' brilliant CITIZEN KANE, in that the main character is trying to piece together the life of a great man just after he has died; similarly, the investigation which leads him to lots of different points of view as he interviews several people close to the great man. But the big difference lies in the fact that the narrator of this book, V, knew Sebastian Knight personally, and can fill in many of the gaps in his half-brother's life.

Because of the nature of the narrative, we don't get much about the narrator himself, as he admits that he wants to keep himself out of the text as much as possible. And yet, the passages that linger in the mind the most are those where he was actually present, especially including the final chapters, where he is hunting down Sebastian's mysterious lover, and then rushing to meet his brother at the hospital before he dies. I almost wish that Nabokov had inserted his narrator more often directly into the text because of the vividness of these passages.

I found it interesting that in many cases, Sebastian stood in for Nabokov himself, especially in the feeling that he had lost much of the poetry of the Russian language after switching primarily to English. As this was Nabokov's first book direct written in the English language, this may have been a worry that he had for the future, and indeed it seems to have happened, if his 1967 interview in The Paris Review is any indication.

Also, from the description of Sebastian's novels, I found myself REALLY wanting to read them, and I wonder if Nabokov incorporated any of those plots into his later books; as I move through the rest of his English-language fiction, I guess I'll just have to wait to see if this is the case.