In Lectures on Literature Vladimir Nabokov … not only fingers every thread in some half-dozen novels, but also appraises the weave of the narrative and the pattern of the imagery, and with the eye of one who knows, points out the fine buttonholing in the first sentence and the satisfying zippering of the last.

Given annually at Cornell University from 1948–1958, these lectures were designed to introduce undergraduates to "Masters of European Fiction."… [They] are now presented … in two volumes, this one devoted to English, French and German writers, with a second due out next spring on the great Russians. (p. 3)

Oddly enough, the exuberant expertise of the Lectures on Literature most reminds me of Ezra Pound's humorous, iconoclastic The ABCs of Reading. Pound, making brilliant critical statements in his best Ol'Ez style, advocated close attention to a few key works and a particular focus on form; similarly Nabokov exalts...