Nabokov believes, and I generally concur, that good readers have imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense. I do believe, however, that his description is entirely too limited. He takes the view of a story that another author or a critic would have, viewing the tapestry of story, but remaining detached from the minutiae of character identification. This abstract view detracts from the lush emotional development of individual characters, and may cause the reader to lose the thread of character development entirely. Personally, I do not think that this is the intent of the original authors, who build the environment around the story, not vice versa. Without a firm grasp of the "shuttle" of the story, it is impossible to follow the skein of the background with any certainty. Just as a tapestry is woven on the warp, the characters hold the story together, with the weft of background filling out, and holding together the entire work. I am not what I would characterize as a good reader, as I often have difficulty holding the delicate threads of human emotion, and my memory leaves much to be desired.
The picture is from the Wikimedia Commons, and found on Nabokov's wikipedia page
