Paul Benedict Grant is an Associate Professor of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. In addition to his many publications on Nabokov's humour, he has written on humour in the work of Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor, and is co-editor of Carver Across the Curriculum: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching the Fiction and Poetry of Raymond Carver (2011).
Paul Grant has thought longer and harder about Nabokov's humour than anyone, and longer and harder about humour theory than any Nabokovian. Just as Nabokov appeals to the senses, the emotions, the thinking mind, and the imagination, so, Grant shows, Nabokov's humour appeals across the range of human experience from physical slapstick to metaphysical pratfalls.--Brian Boyd, University of Auckland Writing seriously about humour is a dangerous affair and taking on Nabokov's humour multiplies the risks. Paul Grant negotiates such difficulties, and much else, with patient and intelligent care. His book is a major study of laughter and enlarges our understanding of Nabokov's work in a great many ways.--Michael Wood, Princeton University