Customer Reviews (2)

Amazing writer gives modernism a good name

Picture Vladimir Nabokov. In the hall of mirrors that is popular culture, he is the dirty man who wrote the dirty book "Lolita,"about a 12-year-old "nymphet" -- he invented the term, by the way-- and her affair with an older man.

Angle the mirror another way, andhe is one of the founders of the modernist novel, which to some people --myself included -- that's a damning phrase. "Modernist" and"post-modernist" literature seems a) self-referencing to thepoint of egotism; b) dedicated to the advancement of decedent themes, andto score big points as a writer, pile it on, brother; and c) obsessed withthe discovery that the "arts" -- whether books, pictures ormovies -- are artificial, and that we use them to create, well, books,pictures and movies.

Unless you think I am making it up, here's anexample drawn from real life: a few years back, a Charlotte museum mountedan exhibition of a painter's work, one of which was a canvas whose frontside was turned toward the wall, exposing a paint-stained frame. Anewspaper reviewer breathlessly informed the reading public that the artistdid this "to inform the viewer that most paintings arerecetangular."

Now, a reasonably intelligent person could probablyreach that conclusion without much effort, but discoveries like these seemto drive those who tread into the "modern" era of art.

SoVlaidmir Nabokov's reputation is caught between two very opposing poles. Heeither panders to the worst tastes of man, or the worst tastes of art.

Fortunately, he is neither, and the Library of America agrees. Thenon-profit publisher throws its reputation behind Nabokov as a writer worthreading by publishing all of his English-language novels in three volumes.The first volume covers his work from 1941 to 1951: "The Real Life ofSebastian Knight," "Bend Sinister," and his memoir,"Speak, Memory." The middle work contains the notorious"Lolita," "Pale Fire," "Pnin," and the"Lolita" screenplay Nabokov wrote for Stanley Kubrick. Theconcluding volume contains "Ada," "Transparent Things,"and "Look at the Harlequins!"

But of these works, only"Lolita" stands alone. It is not a dirty book, and one shouldpity those American and British tourists who, in the mid-1950s, bought thepale olive-green two-volume paperbacks published in Paris by the notoriousOlympia Press. Those expecting frankly pornographic stories like "TheStory of O" and "How to Do It" would have been sorelydisappointed in Humbert Humbert's self-confessed defense of his rape (not"seduction," which implies a willingness to be seduced) andexploitation of Delores Haze, "Lolita, light of my life,fire of myloins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip ofthree steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee.Ta."

Even Olympia's publisher was taken in, telling a mutual friendthat he though Nabokov was Humbert, and that he was attempting topopularize nymphet love.

What does become apparent after reading throughthe volumes (and aided by an excellent two-volume biography by Brian Boyd)is that there is much more to Nabokov than meets the eye. Delving deeper inhis works reveals a funhouse hall of mirrors that can lead to a definitiveend, and there's not much in modernist fiction that could substantiate thatclaim.

What sets Nabokov off from other writers is his use of thelanguage. Raised in Tsarist Russia, Nabokov was a child prodigy who wastaught Russian, French and English at an early age. His prose is elegent,his command of English astounding. It's close to the prose of Henry James,but except for the foreign phrases, which the Library editionsprovidetranslations and explanations, far more understandable.

Descriptionspulled at random from "Lolita" ring as if English was a newlyminted language, capable of expressing humor ("The bed was a frightfulmess with overtones of potato chips") and snobbish anger ("Lo hadgrabbed some comics from the back seat and, mobile white-bloused, one brownelbow out of the window, was deep in the current adventure of some clout orclown").

Even, when Humbert meets his Lolita long after she escapedhis clutches, when he believes that he still loves her, heart-rending:"In her washed-out grey eyes, strangely spectacled, our poor romancewas for a moment reflected, pondered upon, and dismissed like a dull party,like a rainy picnic to which only the dullest bores had come, like ahumdrum exercise, like a bit of dry mud caking her childhood."

Thisis not casual reading, but neither is it reading-as-masochistic exercise,with furrowed brows and an exasperated flipping of once-read pages. Thereis a surface meaning that is easily accessible, but there are deepermeanings, in-jokes, ironies and moral questions worthy of consideration.

The best volume of the three is the second, which contains"Lolita," the screenplay he wrote for Stanley Kubrick (which wasnot used), the comic novel (for Nabokov at least) "Pnin" and"Pale Fire."

But good works can be found in the other volumesas well. "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight," in the firstvolume, is the author's account of his biographical research on hishalf-brother, the brilliant writer Sebastian Knight, who had died recentlyof a heart condition after writing a half-dozen novels. It bears all thehallmarks of the post-modernist novel replete with a self-absorption withwriters, spurious biography, an unreliable narrator and ironicalreferences."Speak, Memory," also in the first volume, isNabokov's memoirs about growing up in Russia.

Indeed, the onlydisadvantage to reading Nabokov is that it may cause a nagging niggling inthe back of your head, while reading novels in the future, that they justcannot compare to those composed by the American from Russia.

Excellent Survey of Nabokov
This is a good collection of some of Nabokov's most diverse work. Ada is a beautiful discourse on philosophy and incest that rivals the classic Lolita. Transparent Things is a short but extremely dense book, written inan amazing narrative; a personal favorite. Look At The Harlequins is afascinating autobiography told theough the perspective of an author with aparallel life. A very worthy buy! ... Read more

Product Description
Vladimir Nabokov saw rich colors in letters and sounds and noted the deficiency of color in literature, praising Gogol as the first Russian writer to truly appreciate yellow and violet. He saw q as browner than k, and s as not the light blue of c, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl. For anyone who has ever wondered how the colors Nabokov heard might manifest themselves visually, Alphabet in Color is a remarkable journey of discovery. Jean Holabird's interpretation of the colored alphabets of one of the twentieth century's literary greats is a revelation. The book masterfully brings to life the charming and vibrant synesthetic colored letters that until now existed only in Nabokov's mind. In Alphabet in Color Jean Holabird's grasp of form and space blends perfectly with Nabokov's idea that a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape. In his playful foreword, Brian Boyd, "the prince of Nabokovians", points out that an important part of "Nabokov's passion for precision was his passion for color." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Only slightly amused.
The book is a bit quaint to glance at, but actually owning the thing is rather unnecessary. In all actuality, Nabokov's description of his synesthesia in Speak, Memory (here quoted and illustrated) is more than sufficient for the interested. Illustrating it proves to be diminutive and demeaning. The whole point of synesthesia is that it does not take place on the physical, universally-visible plane, and those visual artists who have "successfully" explored synesthesia in their paintings, etc. have not done so in the very literal manner that this book undertakes. Any fellow synesthesate is bound to be disappointed and frustrated by the very literal paintings of Nabokov's personal alphabet and will find that the synesthesate's experience is not captured at all. Non-synesthesates will likely fall to the misfortune of idealizing Nabokov's condition and will be only further from understanding the beautiful, solipsizing, exceedingly personal perspective with which synesthesia burdens its subject.

In short, just read Nabokov and use your imagination.

Amazing Synaesthesia Alphabet
This book helps you to understand synaesthesia (in this case, seeing the sounds of the alphabet as colors) as well as Nabokov's genius writing style. Plus it's a truly beautiful physical object, thoughtfully presented and satisfying to flip through. 100% recommended!

Synthesia, anyone? Why not if it manifests itself the way it did with Vladimir Nabokov?
Vladimir Nabokov had synesthesia, a "mixing of the senses" that in his case manifested itself as "audition coloree" or the "involuntary attribution of colors to the sound of letters."

In this thin volume, Jean Holabird seeks to interpret Nabokov's "delightful account of his own vivid version of the condition" through visual renderings of portions of the text of Nabokov's autobiography Speak, Memory where he described how he saw every letter of the alphabet in color, e.g. "The long a of the English alphabet has for me the tint of weathered wood" and "Noodle-limp l" (the lowercase l written in script like spaghetti twisted to form a loop).

After "reading" the book, my husband said he would not mind having synesthesia himself - proof positive that Holabird made the condition appear appealing through her interpretation of it where Nabokov was concerned, at least.

commercial with private press appeal
This commercially produced and priced book has the appearance of a private press book.
recommended not only for Nabokov admirers

No student of Nabokov's literary work should pass up the opportunity to peruse this unique and original study
Renowned twentieth-century literary author Vladimir Nabokov maintained that he could "hear" color. Enhanced with the memorable and interpretative illustrations of Jean Holabird, Alphabet In Color showcases what Nabokov heard with respect to colors would manifest visually to the rest of us with charming, vibrant, synesthetic colored letters. No student of Nabokov's literary work (which included "Lolita", "The Gift", "Pale Fire", "The Defense", "Invitation to a Beheading", Pnin", "Ada", and so much more) should pass up the opportunity to peruse this unique and original study of Nabokov's appreciation of color and its role in western literature.
... Read more

Product Description
After a brilliant literary career in Russian, VladimirNabokov came to the United States and went on to an even morebrilliant one in English--earning a place as one of the greatestwriters of his adopted home. Between 1941 and 1974 he published theautobiography and eight novels now collected by The Library of Americain an authoritative three-volume set. "The Real Life of SebastianKnight" is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writer's halfbrother searches to unravel the enigma of the famous novelist'slife. "Bend Sinister," Nabokov's most explicitly political novel, isthe haunting, dreamlike story of a quiet philosophy professor caughtup in the bureaucratic terror of a totalitarian police state. "Speak,Memory" is the dazzling memoir of Nabokov's childhood in imperialRussia amd exile in Europe. The texts in this volume have beencorrected based on the author's own copies. Two companion volumescollect "Lolita," "Pnin," "Pale Fire," and "Lolita: A Screenplay," and"Ada," "Transparent Things," and "Look at the Harlequins!" ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Not Out of Print
This is not out of print, but is available by direct order from the Library of America website.

Real Nabokov
It's a sad fact that Vladimir Nabokov is still thought primarily as the guy who wrote a book about a middle-aged man's crush on a preteen girl. What that fails to note is that Nabokov, a Russian expatriate who spent many years in America, also wrote many other novels that were often even more groundbreaking than "Lolita."

Three of them were compiled into "Novels and Memoirs 1941-1951": the horrifyingpolitical satire "Bend Sinister," the entertainingly offbeat "Real Life of Sebastian Knight," and the unique memoir "Speak Memory." These three each demonstrate why Vladimir Nabokov was one of the best writers of the 20th century.

"Bend Sinister" is the most obviously political of all the novels Nabokov wrote.
It tells the story of Krug, a philosopher in the land of Padukgrad, who is dealing with the death of his wife, and having to raise his young son alone. To make things worse, an inept inventor's son named Paduk, has become the dictator. Worse, Krug is somehow in Paduk's way -- and Paduk will do anything to get Krug to endorse him. Literally, anything.

"The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" has a lighter tone than "Bend Sinister," with an unnamed narrator searching for clues about the true persona of his brother, Sebastian Knight, a famed writer. It ends up becoming a superb satire/detective story, looking at the faint traces that biographers snatch at, but which can only give a tiny look at the whole.

"Speak Memory" is an entirely different kind of book -- it's all about Nabokov himself. He reexamines his colorful life, but not so much through basic experiences and facts. Instead, he looks at how he made sense of the world, whether as a privileged child, a man torn up by the Russian Revolution, and finally finding sanctuary in another land.

It might come as a surprise that the famous "Lolita," which caused such a scandal at the time, is actually one of Nabokov's less complex books. He dabbled in metafiction, existentialism, autobiography, and almost always in satire. And there are almost always layers on layers of meaning in his books -- these aren't the exception.

His writing is dense, lush and detailed, and he seems almost to blur the line between fantasy and reality, especially since "Bend Sinister" takes little bits from various totalitarian governments. Even stranger, Krug apparently discovers that he is actually Nabokov's creation, and has an existential crisis. And Nabokov's self-examination is as fascinating as any bestselling novel, where he revisits those bizarre thoughts that we all have as children.

A harrowing political thriller, an amusing satire, and an intriguing autobiography make up "Novels and Memoirs 1941-1951." A writer like no other, and three books like no other.

Incredible writer doesn't deserve dirty old man rep

Picture Vladimir Nabokov. In the hall of mirrors that is popular culture, he is the dirty man who wrote the dirty book "Lolita,"about a 12-year-old "nymphet" -- he invented the term, by the way-- and her affair with an older man.

Angle the mirror another way, andhe is one of the founders of the modernist novel, which to some people --myself included -- that's a damning phrase. "Modernist" and"post-modernist" literature seems a) self-referencing to thepoint of egotism; b) dedicated to the advancement of decedent themes, andto score big points as a writer, pile it on, brother; and c) obsessed withthe discovery that the "arts" -- whether books, pictures ormovies -- are artificial, and that we use them to create, well, books,pictures and movies.

Unless you think I am making it up, here's anexample drawn from real life: a few years back, a Charlotte museum mountedan exhibition of a painter's work, one of which was a canvas whose frontside was turned toward the wall, exposing a paint-stained frame. Anewspaper reviewer breathlessly informed the reading public that the artistdid this "to inform the viewer that most paintings arerecetangular."

Now, a reasonably intelligent person could probablyreach that conclusion without much effort, but discoveries like these seemto drive those who tread into the "modern" era of art.

SoVlaidmir Nabokov's reputation is caught between two very opposing poles. Heeither panders to the worst tastes of man, or the worst tastes of art.

Fortunately, he is neither, and the Library of America agrees. Thenon-profit publisher throws its reputation behind Nabokov as a writer worthreading by publishing all of his English-language novels in three volumes.The first volume covers his work from 1941 to 1951: "The Real Life ofSebastian Knight," "Bend Sinister," and his memoir,"Speak, Memory." The middle work contains the notorious"Lolita," "Pale Fire," "Pnin," and the"Lolita" screenplay Nabokov wrote for Stanley Kubrick. Theconcluding volume contains "Ada," "Transparent Things,"and "Look at the Harlequins!"

But of these works, only"Lolita" stands alone. It is not a dirty book, and one shouldpity those American and British tourists who, in the mid-1950s, bought thepale olive-green two-volume paperbacks published in Paris by the notoriousOlympia Press. Those expecting frankly pornographic stories like "TheStory of O" and "How to Do It" would have been sorelydisappointed in Humbert Humbert's self-confessed defense of his rape (not"seduction," which implies a willingness to be seduced) andexploitation of Delores Haze, "Lolita, light of my life,fire of myloins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip ofthree steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee.Ta."

Even Olympia's publisher was taken in, telling a mutual friendthat he though Nabokov was Humbert, and that he was attempting topopularize nymphet love.

What does become apparent after reading throughthe volumes (and aided by an excellent two-volume biography by Brian Boyd)is that there is much more to Nabokov than meets the eye. Delving deeper inhis works reveals a funhouse hall of mirrors that can lead to a definitiveend, and there's not much in modernist fiction that could substantiate thatclaim.

What sets Nabokov off from other writers is his use of thelanguage. Raised in Tsarist Russia, Nabokov was a child prodigy who wastaught Russian, French and English at an early age. His prose is elegent,his command of English astounding. It's close to the prose of Henry James,but except for the foreign phrases, which the Library editionsprovidetranslations and explanations, far more understandable.

Descriptionspulled at random from "Lolita" ring as if English was a newlyminted language, capable of expressing humor ("The bed was a frightfulmess with overtones of potato chips") and snobbish anger ("Lo hadgrabbed some comics from the back seat and, mobile white-bloused, one brownelbow out of the window, was deep in the current adventure of some clout orclown").

Even, when Humbert meets his Lolita long after she escapedhis clutches, when he believes that he still loves her, heart-rending:"In her washed-out grey eyes, strangely spectacled, our poor romancewas for a moment reflected, pondered upon, and dismissed like a dull party,like a rainy picnic to which only the dullest bores had come, like ahumdrum exercise, like a bit of dry mud caking her childhood."

Thisis not casual reading, but neither is it reading-as-masochistic exercise,with furrowed brows and an exasperated flipping of once-read pages. Thereis a surface meaning that is easily accessible, but there are deepermeanings, in-jokes, ironies and moral questions worthy of consideration.

The best volume of the three is the second, which contains"Lolita," the screenplay he wrote for Stanley Kubrick (which wasnot used), the comic novel (for Nabokov at least) "Pnin" and"Pale Fire."

But good works can be found in the other volumesas well. "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight," in the firstvolume, is the author's account of his biographical research on hishalf-brother, the brilliant writer Sebastian Knight, who had died recentlyof a heart condition after writing a half-dozen novels. It bears all thehallmarks of the post-modernist novel replete with a self-absorption withwriters, spurious biography, an unreliable narrator and ironicalreferences."Speak, Memory," also in the first volume, isNabokov's memoirs about growing up in Russia.

Indeed, the onlydisadvantage to reading Nabokov is that it may cause a nagging niggling inthe back of your head, while reading novels in the future, that they justcannot compare to those composed by the American from Russia.

Nabokov!
This collection of novels and a memoir is a must for anyone interested in twentieth century literature.Nabokov is a giant, a superstar, a Freud-bashing genius--order now! ... Read more

Product Description
The story of Nabokov's life continues with his arrival in the United States in 1940. He found that supporting himself and his family was not easy--until the astonishing success of Lolita catapulted him to world fame and financial security. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

One of the best biographies I've ever read
Brian Boyd's scope and research in this book are just outstanding.I'm not usually that interested in biographies of writers, often the biographer does not relate their life to their literature in a way that interests me, but Nabokov is one of my favorite writers, so I thought I'd give this book a try.First you should note that it is a huge book that spans a large time frame, but you shouldn't be put off by the size, because Boyd's prose is very succinct and the chapters are manageable.It's clear to me that he appreciates Nabokov's works, as the best chapters are the ones detailing the periods of time when Nabokov is writing his works.There is so much great background information to be found here, that Nabokov wrote on index cards, the road trips that influenced Lolita, and Nabokov's relationship with his wife, Vera.This is what literary biographies should belike.I highly recommend this to any fans of Nabokov who want to learn more about his life and his writing.

The Biography Nabokov Deserves!
In my review of Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, I say that "I am grateful to Boyd for his serious scholarship, his lively prose, and his close analysis of Nabokov's oeuvre."That comment applieswholeheartedly to this volume as well.

As a professor of literature atCornell, Nabokov taught his students to focus on the details of literature. He taught them that the small details of a fictional world were far moreimportant than broad generalizations about literary trends.One infamousmidterm question asked the students to describe the wallpaper in acharacter's bedroom--a description that was only provided in a single lineof the novel.Nabokov believed that good readers paid attention to detailslike this, and specific, startling detail was what made reality beautiful. I think Nabokov would have approved of Boyd's detailed, beautifulbiography.

Boyd is a good Nabokovian.He sees the details of Nabokov'slife and presents them to us vividly.He also analyzes the details ofNabokov's work, and provides us with lucid, and often surprising, readingsand interpretations's of Nabokov's novels.

In The American Years Boydreminds us why Nabokov was once hailed as perhaps the greatest writer ofthe latter half of the 20th Century.And after staying up all night tofinish the enthralling story of Nabokov's life, I would have to say thatBoyd is right.

Nabokov will certainly be remembered as one of thegreats, and Boyd has given Nabokov the biography he deserves. ... Read more

Product Description

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography and hailed by critics as both "monumental" (The Boston Globe) and "utterly romantic" (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff's Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov--the émigré author of Lolita; Pale Fire; and Speak, Memory--wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, Véra, and third for no one at all.

"Without my wife," he once noted, "I wouldn't have written a single novel." Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs' fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Véra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine--a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's Véra is a triumph of the biographical form.
Amazon.com Review
She was wearing a black satin mask when they first met in1923, and in a sense she wore a mask--that of the dutiful wife andhelpmeet--throughout their 52-year marriage. Especially after theAmerican publication of Lolita made herhusband notorious in 1958, Véra Nabokov's presence at herhusband's side was crucial, writes her biographer Stacy Schiff: "[It]kept the fiction in its place, reassured readers ... that Nabokov'sperversities were of a different kind." But Véra Slonim(1902-91) was essential to Vladimir Nabokov's literary career from thebeginning. She had a gift for handling practical matters that herspouse proudly lacked; she screened him from his publishers and hisadmirers with equal firmness, and in doing so she liberated him tofulfill the artistic genius they both believed he possessed. Praisedfor a previous biography of Antoine deSaint-Exupéry, Schiff here cements her reputation as aliterary biographer of striking subtlety and perceptiveness. Sheestablishes a strong base in chapter 1 with her excellent analysis ofVéra Slonim's youth in a privileged Russian Jewish family inSt. Petersburg. She then pursues her subject's elusive personalitythrough hints in Nabokov's work and the comments of friends andcolleagues. Schiff's elegant prose and eye for nuance nearly matchNabokov himself in this lucid, unsentimental portrait of amarriage. --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

Fabulous!
This account of the relationship between the Nabokov's was a superb treasuer.No wonder it won the Pullitzer.The depth of the relationship between these two intellectuals was refreshing.Both people were very complex and loved each other deeply.Vera was everything to him and she was completely devoted to him and was always there for him through good and bad times.They were true soul mates.

Surprising and rich...
Other writers have elaborated at length on the quality of the contents of VERA, so I'll refrain from that.I will note - and base my own recommendation on two qualities well-investigated by Schiff, and which I loved:this is a remarkable love story, between two of the 20th century's great intellectuals, and the glimpse into not one but two creative minds at work is priceless.

And Schiff does great justice to the everyday details of this collaborative relationship, with day-to-day qualities other writers would take for granted made compelling.

Perhaps a book for Nabokov's fans, but a great one for sure.

-David Alston

Vera (Mrs.Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff
Since you are inviting me to submit a review of the book that you have not yet shipped to me, I hope this note will help you to revise -- and improve -- your business procedures.My rating, therefore, applies to the latter, not the book itself; I would've let the rating field empty had the system let me do so.
Yours,
BGV

The story of a special marriage well told
Vera Nabakov was totally devoted to her husband, to his life and to his work. Stacy Schiff's excellent biography tells their story in considerable detail. Vera Slonim the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family in marrying Nabakov made her religion his life and his art. She took upon herself many of the practical tasks that Nabakov disdained. They developed between themselves a private language in which they shared their own unique synashaetic way of feeling the world. She typed and read his manuscripts, found quotations for him helped him create one of the twentieth century's great literary oeuvres.

yes, but....
it was a very good biography, but if you read the Boyd bio of her husband first you may be left wondering if he had already snatched up all the good quotes. ... Read more

Product Description
This first major critical biography of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the greatest of twentieth-century writers, finally allows us full access to the dramatic details of his life and the depths of his art. An intensely private man, Nabokov was uprooted first by the Russian Revolution and then by World War II. Transformed into a permanent wanderer, he did not achieve fame until late in life, with the success of Lolita. In this first of two volumes, Brian Boyd vividly describes the liberal milieu of the aristocratic Nabokovs, their escape from Russia, Nabokov's education at Cambridge, and the murder of his father in Berlin. Boyd then turns to the years that Nabokov spent, impoverished, in Germany and France, until the coming of Hitler forced him to flee, with wife and son, to the United States. This volume stands on its own as a fascinating exploration of Nabokov's Russian years and Russian worlds, prerevolutionary and émigré.

In the course of his ten years' work on the biography, Boyd traveled along Nabokov's trail everywhere from Yalta to Palo Alto. The only scholar to have had free access to the Nabokov archives in Montreux and the Library of Congress, he also interviewed at length Nabokov's family and scores of his friends and associates.

For the general reader, Boyd offers an introduction to Nabokov the man, his works, and his world. For the specialist, he provides a basis for all future research on Nabokov's life and art, as he dates and describes the composition of all Nabokov's works, published and unpublished.

Boyd investigates Nabokov's relation to and his independence from his time, examines the special structures of his mind and thought, and explains the relations between his philosophy and his innovations of literary strategy and style. At the same time he provides succinct introductions to all the fiction, dramas, memoirs, and major verse; presents detailed analyses of the major books that break new ground for the scholar, while providing easy paths into the works for other readers; and shows the relationship between Nabokov's life and the themes and subjects of his art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Behold the splendid Bird of Paradise!
Who would have thought that the world's foremost Nabokov expert is a Kiwi? Amazing. Boyd's two volume bio is a must for all Nabokovistas. He splits the life neatly between the Russian Years, ie from birth until emigration to the US, and American Years, ie the rest.
Boyd tells us Nabokov's life story and interweaves the main prose works and their interpretations. While still a Russian novelist, Nab published under the pen name Sirin, which means Bird of Paradise. How appropriate this choice of name!
The man was born towards the end of the 19th century in Zarist Russia to an aristocratic family of latifundistas and jurists in parlament and government service on cabinet level. He grew up in riches, spending his childhood between the town appartment in St.Petersburg (to which I made a pilgrimage in 2006) and a splendid country mansion in the vicinity. He began collecting butterflies as a boy; he started painting, but dropped that, it was not his real talent. He started writing poetry early.
He became personally rich as a teen, when he inherited a fortune from an uncle. He lost it all in the Bolshie revolution. He escaped to Western Europe with the family as a young man. He studied in England and was a notorious playboy, a gifted chess player, soccer goalkeeper, tennis coach and poet. He moved to Berlin, which was the center of Russian emigration. His father was killed by Monarchist assassins, perversely. (One of the assassins later became a Nazi spy on emigrants.) He earned the family upkeep with English and tennis lessons. He became a well established novelist as Sirin. He met Vera and married her and had a son with her. When the Nazis took over, they prepared to move to France, which however took a few more years, partly because Vera earned well as top secretary to Berlin businesses. Her Jewish family background remained a strong motivator to leave, however. They moved to Paris, and a few years later were lucky to get away in time to the US.
Nab always claimed that despite his many years of living in Berlin, he never learned German. This is doubtful, and probably a political statement. Other writers have traced some of Nab's texts and letters to sources such as Schopenhauer or H.C.Andersen, animportant source and probably in the German translation. It is even likely that he did read his favorite subject of ridicule Thomas Mann in the original. Possibly also Freud, who was his supreme bete noire.
If you want to look at Nab's Russian novels, my suggestion would be The Gift, Lushin's Defense, Bend Sinister, and the Invitation to a Beheading. But actually, go for all of them, and don't forget the short stories.
The American years of the 2nd volume include the Swiss years. He spent the last years of his life in a hotel on the Lac de Geneve. Odd that he never owned a house after losing the 'paradise' in Russia. He refused to try to replace the loss.
His work in the US can be divided into 3 categories: museum work as a curator for the enthomology department, classifying butterflies; teaching work as professor for European literature (from which came some volumes of highly interesting texts on literature); and writing novels and stories, plus the so-called non-fiction of Speak, Memory (a most fantastic autobiography); and a Gogol monography; and a Pushkin translation plus some minor translations. The man did work a lot. For fun he went hunting butterflies all over the US. From this came Lolita, which made him rich.
Asked why he chose to live in La Suisse despite his professed good American citizenship, he said that he and Vera wanted to be near their son, who was a professional opera singer with assignments in Italy, plus a mountain climber and race car driver.
Among his English books my favorites are Speak, Memory and Pale Fire.

Probably the definitive Nabokov biography for years to come
The man himself once said, "Biographies are generally fun to write, less fun to read."The implication is that the person who authors the biography becomes so immersed in the life of their subject that biographies end up being labors of love.However, take that biography and assign it to a student...

I would have to say that this two-volume biography of Nabokov is the mathematical proof that disproves the formula above.Boyd plays the role of historian/biographer, spending time explaining the political scene of Russia early on in N's life, and traces the movements of the most significant person in N's first twenty years; his father.Of course, this is probably out of necessity considering his father's position in the whole political mish-mash that was fin-de-siecle Russia.I might gripe and say that there's too much attention paid to the politics, but that's because I'm an English major, not a historian or a politician, and I'm reading for pleasure.Were I reading for a thesis, these excerpts would be invaluable.

I'm thrilled about the chapters of Russian emigre life in Europe following the Bolshevik Revolution.Not only does it trace the influence that wafts through N's early stuff (and follows through his life), but it also gives us a taste of the climate of those years, plus a roster of sorts of who was part of that microcosm.This is going to be, in my estimation, a highly researched period of literature, once it becomes fashionable that is, and this biography will be a resource for all those students looking for a glimpse into that world.Studies in Nabokov are really beginning to blossom, and this will spur interest in that era as well.

N's life is portrayed as an emerging talent, rather than a natural genius who could command language and characters as well at 20 as at 70.This humanizes Nabokov, a figure who can sometimes seem a little god-like to his devotees.Expelling mist and myth is the mark of a good biography, next to joyously reporting the life of the subject.The analysis provided by Boyd in the sections dealing with early literature (such as the comparative criticism of his first novel "Mary" and the story "Return of Chorb") is revealing in this case because he can explain what Nabokov lacks here, or does not do so well early on.

Extensive references and a collection of satisfying photographs complete the package.One of the best photos being a shot of the Rohzdestveno manor that Nabokov inherited from his Uncle Vasily at age 17.A 17 year-old with his own mansion.Can you say harem?

Great book- Even better than Nabokov himself, at times
Having read what little Nabokov anyone has read (Lolita) I exchanged this book for a Bogart biography I received as birthday present. I was hooked and, having read the whole book through in a few days, I bought the second volume and I wasn't let down. The book is a jewel and Nabokov becomes almost as close an acquaintance of the reader as Johnson became per Boswell's book.

The elegiac childhood that Nabokov enjoyed as the son of an upper class family of political liberals and Russian patriots is hard to imagine given the awfulness of Russian history since the 1905. After the death of his grandfather Nabokov became a millionaire at age 10. His family was close knit and loving (which may explain his deep love for his wife Véra and his son Dmitri, named after Vladimir's father). The Nabokovs managed to escape Russia from their Crimean summer house and eventually ended up in Germany, where they endured hardship and persecution. Nabokov's father, who had been an Education Minister during Kerensky's brief democratic administration, was murdered by an extreme-nationalist from the "Black Hundreds", a paramilitary organisation. Amazingly, Nabokov never bored to learn German although he lived in Germany for twenty years because he felt German would destroy his gift for Russian. His French was flawless, though (he died in French Switzerland). His meeting of the beautiful, brilliant Véra is touching, a rare moment of perfection on this cursed globe, and they became a very close couple. Mrs Nabokov was much more than a wife: she was a soul-mate and a loving collaborator in all Nabokov's efforts. Nabokov, in spite of his poverty managed to continue to live with aristocratic non-chalance and was always able to afford extensive and elaborate holidays that nowadays are only possible for the very well-to-do. The book ends as the Nabokovs and young Dmitri move to America, barely escaping France before the German invasion. Better times were yet to come, and they are aptly told in the second volume.

Most of the books Nabokov wrote in this period were in Russian and thus they have not been as widely divulged as his books in English. I can't appreciate their quality, not reading Russian, but Boyd notes many references of experts which regarded them as some of the best writing in Russian in the 20th century, and more deserving of a Nobel prize than either Pasternak or Solzhenitzn.

The title of my review will probably be deplored by many Nabokov fans, but in fact I was deeply attracted to Nabokov's elegance, charm and tolerance, by his revulsion to snobbery (he was always annoyed by some Europeans' disdain for US culture or some Russian emigrés' disgust at the accent of Jewish Russian speakers), by his unerring political sense that led him to distrust most extremisms of the last century (he was one of the few important authors not to have written blatant political nonsense), and very much enjoyed his curious interest in butterflies (his fantasy of a lavish, multi-volume Encyclopedia of butterflies of the Russian Empire smacks of Borges to me), and his extensive work at Harvard concerning them (he does have a species to his name). Boyd's descriptions led to me seek Nabokov's literal translation of Pushkin's epical poem, Eugene Onegin (I found the translation unreadable, as many people have), and, in spite of Boyd's wonderful summaries, I couldn't really get into some of Nabokov' other works in English (Ada or Ardor and Pale Fire I thought too modernist for my taste- his literary criticism was great, although I winced at his evident distaste for Jane Austen- and shared his love for Dickens). But Nabokov is as great a writer as he as a biographer's subject, and Boyd's book is probably the best literary biography after The Life of Johnson. I heartily recommend it (it's great even if you haven't actually read Nabokov).

Brilliant
Both volumes of this set are excellent. This is the way literary biographyshould be done. It's so good, in fact, that you wouldn't necessarily haveto be a huge Nabokov fan to want to read both books. (Of course, I am adiehard Nabokovian, so I raced through them even more eagerly.) Bravo toBrian Boyd.

A Brilliant Critical Biography
Brian Boyd's work on Nabokov has been hailed by scholars around the globe; this biography (and the companion volume on The American Years) proves Boyd's brilliance.

When I purchased the two volumes of the biography, Iwas a bit intimidated by their sheer size.The Russian Years alone isnearly 700 pages, and The American Years even larger.Yet I soon foundmyself enthralled in Boyd's detailed portrait of Nabokov and his work.

InThe Russian Years, Boyd, as a good non-Freudian reader of Nabokov (asNabokov would have wished), provides intimate details of Nabokov's earlyfamily life and his trials and tribulations as an emigre writer in Europe. Boyd provides a fascinating account of Nabokov's father, who'sassassination would impact young Nabokov so much (and later, provideinspiration for the "assassination" in Pale Fire).But Boyd,thankfully, does not try to explain Nabokov through the death of hisfather; he meticulously lays out the facts and builds a complex portait ofthe man, and his fiction.

To be honest, I was far more interested inreading about Nabokov's American years, but after reading this book, I amgrateful to Boyd for his serious scholarship, his lively prose, and hisclose analysis of Nabokov's oeuvre.I'm glad that I didn't pass up thechance to read this wonderful work. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review
The second in Library of America's three-volume collection ofVladimir Nabokov's novels, Novels 1955-1962 contains his mostacclaimed and popular works. The short, often anthologized Pninis included, as is Pale Fire, Nabokov's most elaboratefictional joke: it's a novel masquerading as a 999-line poemaccompanied by a professorial pedant's extensive annotations. But thisdeluxe volume is most valuable for its inclusion of Lolitaalongside the screenplay that Nabokov wrote for StanleyKubrick. Kubrick's film is quite different from the version Nabokovintended, and Novels 1955-1962 offers the opportunity tocompare Lolita's two Nabokovian incarnations with Kubrick's film and with the recent,very controversial movie directed by Adrian Lyne and starring JeremyIrons. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

great
it was a great book and even though the man might be disturbed it is well written and even though its not my normal kind of read i liked it

"Pale Fire" and "Lolita"
"Pnin" isn't that great, in my opinion.On the other hand, "Lolita" and "Pale Fire" are hilarious send ups of intellectuals (which Nabokov obviously was, too).That's right: "Lolita" isn't mainly about pedophilia--it's about the equally perverse desire to mold youth to fit one's own wishes.

The best of Nabokov
Three classic novels and a solid screenplay adaptation -- Vladimir Nabokov's literary genius is perhaps best shown in the second volume of Library of America's collections. The classic "Lolita" is paired with its own screenplay adaptation, and the comic "Pnin" and witty "Pale Fire."

"Lolita" is the tale for which Nabokov is best known. The redundantly-named, middle-aged (dirty old man) Humbert Humbert is haunted by some teenage love he had long ago, and which he thinks he has refound in the prepubescent Delores Haze (called "Lolita" by Humbert). He sets out to seduce the unsuspecting girl, but her mom is standing in the way...

"Pnin" is a gently comic tale about Timofey Pnin, a timid, moderately neurotic Russian professor who now lives in the United States. He's amazed by technology, fussy, a bit weird about his health, and has problems with American train schedules. The unfortunate Pnin stumbles from one problem to another, trying to keep everything under control in uncontrollable circumstances.

"Pale Fire" is perhaps the best literary satire out there. Poet John Shade wrote the sprawling 999-line poem "Pale Fire," shortly before being murdered. After his death, the poem is being painstakingly dissected and annotated by his neighbor, Charles Kinbote. Except Kinbote is a nutjob, who interprets "Pale Fire" as being all about him, and will come up with weird symbolism to justify his belief.

"Lolita: A Screenplay" is almost a different version of "Lolita." Here Nabokov recounted the same events of the novel, but from an ominiscent perspective -- that of the person who would be watching the movie. Very rich, very well-adapted, very evocative for a screenplay, this is almost as good as a book in itself.

Nabokov could handle just about any kind of writing, this collection shows us. From the opulent poetry of "Pale Fire" to the solid screenplay, from the erotic drama of "Lolita" to the chuckling comedy of "Pnin," he handles it all. His writing is detailed and lush, rich almost to the point of choking. He shifts perspectives, tells a story through annotation, sees through the eyes of a pedophile, and does it all with a certain winking flair.

Nabokov's writing is a combination of believable characterizations and rich language. Humbert Humbert, for example, is a horrendously believable person, especially since he makes constant excuses for his pedaphilic behavior -- the characterization is so good, in fact, that newcomers might even think (incorrectly) that Nabokov sympathized with the creep. At the same time, he creates the rather pitiful, absentminded Pnin, the self-serving nutcase Kinbote -- and they're all delightfully three-dimensional. You could bump into people like these on the bus at any time, and they would be just as he describes them.

Comedy, drama, satire and screenwriting are collected in the second Library of America collection of Nabokov's novels. Sexy, funny, brilliant and exquisitely written, these are among the best of Vladimir Nabokov's works.

Nabokov a hard act to follow for other serious writers

Picture Vladimir Nabokov. In the hall of mirrors that is popular culture, he is the dirty man who wrote the dirty book "Lolita,"about a 12-year-old "nymphet" -- he invented the term, by the way-- and her affair with an older man.

Angle the mirror another way, andhe is one of the founders of the modernist novel, which to some people --myself included -- that's a damning phrase. "Modernist" and"post-modernist" literature seems a) self-referencing to thepoint of egotism; b) dedicated to the advancement of decedent themes, andto score big points as a writer, pile it on, brother; and c) obsessed withthe discovery that the "arts" -- whether books, pictures ormovies -- are artificial, and that we use them to create, well, books,pictures and movies.

Unless you think I am making it up, here's anexample drawn from real life: a few years back, a Charlotte museum mountedan exhibition of a painter's work, one of which was a canvas whose frontside was turned toward the wall, exposing a paint-stained frame. Anewspaper reviewer breathlessly informed the reading public that the artistdid this "to inform the viewer that most paintings arerecetangular."

Now, a reasonably intelligent person could probablyreach that conclusion without much effort, but discoveries like these seemto drive those who tread into the "modern" era of art.

SoVlaidmir Nabokov's reputation is caught between two very opposing poles. Heeither panders to the worst tastes of man, or the worst tastes of art.

Fortunately, he is neither, and the Library of America agrees. Thenon-profit publisher throws its reputation behind Nabokov as a writer worthreading by publishing all of his English-language novels in three volumes.The first volume covers his work from 1941 to 1951: "The Real Life ofSebastian Knight," "Bend Sinister," and his memoir,"Speak, Memory." The middle work contains the notorious"Lolita," "Pale Fire," "Pnin," and the"Lolita" screenplay Nabokov wrote for Stanley Kubrick. Theconcluding volume contains "Ada," "Transparent Things,"and "Look at the Harlequins!"

But of these works, only"Lolita" stands alone. It is not a dirty book, and one shouldpity those American and British tourists who, in the mid-1950s, bought thepale olive-green two-volume paperbacks published in Paris by the notoriousOlympia Press. Those expecting frankly pornographic stories like "TheStory of O" and "How to Do It" would have been sorelydisappointed in Humbert Humbert's self-confessed defense of his rape (not"seduction," which implies a willingness to be seduced) andexploitation of Delores Haze, "Lolita, light of my life,fire of myloins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip ofthree steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee.Ta."

Even Olympia's publisher was taken in, telling a mutual friendthat he though Nabokov was Humbert, and that he was attempting topopularize nymphet love.

What does become apparent after reading throughthe volumes (and aided by an excellent two-volume biography by Brian Boyd)is that there is much more to Nabokov than meets the eye. Delving deeper inhis works reveals a funhouse hall of mirrors that can lead to a definitiveend, and there's not much in modernist fiction that could substantiate thatclaim.

What sets Nabokov off from other writers is his use of thelanguage. Raised in Tsarist Russia, Nabokov was a child prodigy who wastaught Russian, French and English at an early age. His prose is elegent,his command of English astounding. It's close to the prose of Henry James,but except for the foreign phrases, which the Library editionsprovidetranslations and explanations, far more understandable.

Descriptionspulled at random from "Lolita" ring as if English was a newlyminted language, capable of expressing humor ("The bed was a frightfulmess with overtones of potato chips") and snobbish anger ("Lo hadgrabbed some comics from the back seat and, mobile white-bloused, one brownelbow out of the window, was deep in the current adventure of some clout orclown").

Even, when Humbert meets his Lolita long after she escapedhis clutches, when he believes that he still loves her, heart-rending:"In her washed-out grey eyes, strangely spectacled, our poor romancewas for a moment reflected, pondered upon, and dismissed like a dull party,like a rainy picnic to which only the dullest bores had come, like ahumdrum exercise, like a bit of dry mud caking her childhood."

Thisis not casual reading, but neither is it reading-as-masochistic exercise,with furrowed brows and an exasperated flipping of once-read pages. Thereis a surface meaning that is easily accessible, but there are deepermeanings, in-jokes, ironies and moral questions worthy of consideration.

The best volume of the three is the second, which contains"Lolita," the screenplay he wrote for Stanley Kubrick (which wasnot used), the comic novel (for Nabokov at least) "Pnin" and"Pale Fire."

But good works can be found in the other volumesas well. "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight," in the firstvolume, is the author's account of his biographical research on hishalf-brother, the brilliant writer Sebastian Knight, who had died recentlyof a heart condition after writing a half-dozen novels. It bears all thehallmarks of the post-modernist novel replete with a self-absorption withwriters, spurious biography, an unreliable narrator and ironicalreferences."Speak, Memory," also in the first volume, isNabokov's memoirs about growing up in Russia.

Indeed, the onlydisadvantage to reading Nabokov is that it may cause a nagging niggling inthe back of your head, while reading novels in the future, that they justcannot compare to those composed by the American from Russia.

Nabokov's Best
This is a compact, sturdy and high quality edition of the first novels Nabokov wrote entirely in English. It's the central volume in a three-volume set of Nabokov's autobiography and English fiction (excluding the short stories), including his finest achievements -- Lolita, Pnin and Pale Fire. The two versions of Lolita (as novel and screen adaptation) are illuminating to read together: the novel is created within Humbert's subjective and self-serving memory, while in the screenplay Nabokov reimagines the story as objective action. I was also intrigued to find that some obvious departures from the novel in Kubrick's film -- such as the opening scene of Humbert shooting Quilty, or the high school prom scene -- are ideas taken from the Nabokov screenplay (in turn fragments of the novel excised in the final version). Brian Boyd offers an impeccable text, much improved over the paperback editions, with a chronology of the author's life. This is the volume to choose if you u! nravel Nabokov's narrative patterns with your own marginal notes and comments, and want a volume that won't disintegrate in a nymphet's span of years. ... Read more

Product Description
For two decades, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, Nabokov introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures, which include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, and Ulysses. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers; Introduction by John Updike; illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Rare book found
Excellent service- book was rare but arrived promptly and in the condition specified: many thanks!

not just another "great writer"
Nabokov's ideas about literature will strike many readers as strange--his near obsession with seemingly trivial points of set description, his lack of interest in Great Ideas or in "character" in the sense of a window into human nature. Such readers would likely describe Nabokov's opinions (and his own artistic creations)as "disembodied," "narrow," "cold," "sanitary." These readers would be making a crucial error, selling both a brilliant artist and themselves short.

Narrative art generally operates as follows: an author presupposes the human world as a place driven by desire, a place defined by the striving for those things (white whale, justice for a father's fratricidal demise, "God") as grant freedom from pain and perhaps even transcendent joy. Drama unfolds as chracters fight over these things, great moral questions get asked (what are one's obligations to others as we strive, Does God care about us and our plans) and we feel kindred ecstacy and despair as characters near their objects or falter. To most, this is literature-- a chronicle of movement up and down a scale of nearness or distance from some highly charged, desired object. Indeed, to most, this is "reality," consciousness itself.

Nabokov has a very different idea. What Nabokov understands, what is central to his conception of literature (and of consciousness), is thatthose objects accepted by other writers as objectively powerful things capable (however complex their identities might otherwise be) of bestowing or denying happiness, have that power only because an indvidual consciousness gives it to them. While Humbert Humbert adores Lolita, homosexual chess partner Gaston Godin is so absolutely immune to her charms that he never even realizes she's one person (he "sees" multiple Humbert "daughters"). Charlotte adores dreadful Humbert because, contrary to what we know him to be, a gallant, handsome continental is the image she makes of him. In such a world, Nabokov's world, tragedy, the final, fatal estrangement from some ultimately longed-for object, has no place: What's a fall from grace when grace was never more than a dream of the mind? Suffice it to say, the "normal" critical values of literature become equally pointless. What DOES matter in this transmorgified world is style and structure, the artistry (the Samsa house, the layer cake in Madame Bovary) with which dreamy things, in art as well as in life, are woven. What seems shallow about Nabokov, is in fact far "deeper" and subtle than anything found in such alledgely "great souled" writers as Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Thomas Mann, etc. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that Nabokov's art begins at a point higher than than where these writers' art, at its highest, finishes.

The smell of sawdust
This is a writer's book. It is not (really) for students of literature. It has almost nothing in the way of meaning or 'higher' criticism. Instead, it's a working writer's careful view of the plot and style of landmark novels. That the writer is Nabokov makes the view sharper, critical and a bit more malign. So much the better.This is the view from the workshop where the boards are cut and planed. The smell of sawdust is in the air. If you are involved in the cabinetry that is fiction, you should spend some time here.

I'm not so enthusiastic about his judgment of Austen and Dickens, but then again I'm not so enthusiastic about my enthusiasms. There's a genius at work here and it's worth looking

Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG: A Novel

Amazon messed up
Amazon has mistakenly crosslinked this book with another, lectures on non-Russian literature, as being another edition of that book.

Solid example of Nabokov's literary perspective
Some time back, I reviewed "Crime and Punishment" for Amazon.One of the commentators on my review suggested that I take a look at Vladimir Nabokov's critical analysis of Dostoevsky. So, via Amazon, I purchased Vladimir Nabokov's book, "Lectures in Literature."As luck would have it, this was not the volume covering Dostoevsky! However, I did take a look anyhow, my curiosity piqued by the comment on my review.The end result? A greater appreciation for Nabokov--and also a sense that I'm not apt to invest a great deal of time reading other of his literary analysis.

The essays in this book represent lectures that he gave at Wellesley College and Cornell University.The introductory comments note that (Page ix): "The fact cannot and need not be disguised that the texts for these essays represent Vladimir Nabokov's written-out notes for delivery as classroom lectures and that they cannot be recognized as a finished literary work. . . ."John Updike's Introduction also provides some context for this work. He notes that Nabokov's lectures provide (Page xxv): ". . .a dazzling demonstration, for those lucky Cornell students in the remote, clean-cut fifties, of the irresistible artistic sensibility." He also notes, in Nabokov's words, the truth of novels, that (Pages xxv-xxvi): ". . .great novels are great fairy tales--and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales. . . ." Nabokov himself points out that a writer can be considered as (a) a storyteller, (b) a teacher, and (c) an enchanter (Page 5). And, above all, he values style and structure in authors' creations.

Maybe a few examples will illustrate his critical approach.First, Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park."Let me confess. . . . I'm not particularly excited about Jane Austen's work. However, Nabokov is very pleased with her work.Given his emphasis on style and structure, he details how well she constructs this work. For instance, at one point, the characters, among whom there are a variety of tensions to begin with, select a play to perform. The decision as to which of the characters in Austen's story would play which characters in the play is well discussed by Nabokov. The play itself raises questions--it was, in fact, an actual play that scandalized some of the characters in the novel.And it exacerbated pre-existing tensions among the characters.All in all, Nabokov makes a great case that Austen's structure of this segment of the novel was well done indeed. And, in terms of style, he says of Austen that (Page 59) "she handles it with perfection."As noted, I am not much excited by Austen's works, but Nabokov sure convinced me that she was a terrific technical writer, who wed her genius to technique and style and structure to create something special.

Briefly, I would also note that his examination of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" leaves him cold.He does not think that it holds together well and that the dichotomy of the characters works well.

Finally, Kafka's "Metamorphosis," a story I read several decades ago.I recall the sense of despair I felt reading about the travails of Gregor Samsa--and a sense that, despite the awful/offal nature of the work that there was something important here.Nabokov is very positive about this piece. Much of this lecture is a simple description of the work, scene by scene, and Nabokov spennds some time noting how Kafka's work is so much better than Stevenson's work discussed above. Samsa's unexplained transformation into a beetle is the event that triggers this story. Nabokov notes how this tragedy has positive elements--a family finally getting its act together even as it abandons Gregor--and illustrates Kafka's style.Of the latter, Nabokov says (Page 283): "You will mark Kafka's style. Its clarity, its precise and formal intonation in such striking contrast to the nightmare matter of his story."

He concludes this set of lectures by congratulating his students on their work--and making a few final points.He concludes (Pages 381-382): "I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotion of the people in the book but the emotions of its author--the joys and difficulties of creation."

I admire his emphasis on style and structure, but I also think there is an almost sanitary quality about some of his observations. Austen? I have found it difficult over decades to get any purchase on her works. Her style and structure doesn't make up for what I feel as an overly mannered style (I expect to get hammered for saying that!). Does one really need to know about her knowledge of a particular play to appreciate (or not appreciate) her novel?I don't know.I'm a political scientist--not a literary critic.Nonetheless, this is an exciting book, as one learns how a literary critic from one critical perspective examining a series of works--Austen, Dickens, Flaubert, Stevenson, Proust, Kafka, and Joyce. If interested in Nabokov's critical perspective, this is a good starting point!
... Read more

Product Description
An illuminating study of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel with special attention to its film versions.
From its first publication in 1955 Nabokov's Lolita has been denounced as immoral filth, hailed as a moral masterpiece, and both praised and damned for stylistic excess. In this fresh appraisal John Lennard provides convenient overviews of Nabokov's life and of the novel (including both Kubrick's and Lyne's film-adaptations), before considering Lolita as pornography, as lepidoptery, as film noir, and as parody.
John Lennard has taught for the Universities of London, Cambridge, and Notre Dame du Lac, for the Open University, and for Fairleigh Dickinson University on-line; he is now Professor of British and American Literature at the University of the West Indies—Mona. His publications include But I Digress: The Exploitation of Parentheses in English Printed Verse (Clarendon Press, 1991), The Poetry Handbook (OUP, 1996; 2/e 2005), with Mary Luckhurst The Drama Handbook (OUP, 2002), and Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction (HEB, 2007; Troubadour 2008)). He is General Editor of HEB’s Genre Fiction Sightlines and Monographs series, for which he has written on Reginald Hill, Walter Mosley, Octavia E. Butler, Ian McDonald, and Tamora Pierce. For Literature Insights he has also written on Hamlet, King Lear, and Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet & Staying On.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An insightful text
I learned a LOT reading this ebook on Lolita, and this was after I had already read the text and even attended a series of lectures on it. John Lennard brings a lot of background knowledge to his reading of this Nabokov's most celebrated text. Nabokov himself, being scientifically, linguistically and literarily adept, uses language that gestures to these various disciplines, so that beyond the relish of wit that characterizes the language of Lolita lies deeper mysteries that can only be probed by those who have somehow worked to acquire knowledge in these areas. Lennard has obviously done the work. He uncovers links between anagrams and the author's entomological interests; he unearths relevant meanings behind names, dates and places; and he clarifies the particular significance that the works of literary fathers such as Homer, Ovid and Poe have for the characters and action of Nabokov's story. In short, this HEB text helps lay the historical and cultural groundwork necessary for a fuller appreciation of Lolita and the genius that went into its creation. Reading Lolita on its own is a pleasure, as the language constantly hints at the power locked within the text. Reading it along with Lennard's 'Literature Insight' encourages you to analyze the constituents of the novel's dynamism and thereby to become more in tune with the mind that wrote it. For Lennard's text grants readers a glimpse into the machinery of language, history, science (and more) that, behind the cover of the text, work so mysteriously and harmoniously together to generate the power that has kept the novel in print for over five decades. ... Read more

Product Description
Midway through last century, Lolita burst on the literary scene--a Russian exile's extraordinary gift to American letters and the New World. The scandal provoked by the novel's subject--the sexual passion of a middle-aged European for a twelve-year-old American girl--was quickly upstaged by the critical attention it received from readers, scholars, and critics around the world. This casebook gathers together an interview with Nabokov as well as nine critical essays. The essays follow a progression focusing first on textual and thematic features and then proceeding to broader issues and cultural implications, including the novel's relations to other works of literature and art and the movies adapted from it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Wonderfully illuminating commentaries on Lolita.
This casebook looks at Nabokov's controversial novel from different angles based on diverse critical schools. It comments on the narrator,on the Americanisation of Humbert Humbert, on the rhetorical tools used to capture the reader and illuminates the way readers have reacted to this wonderful novel. It also takes into account the films on Lolita and discusses them in relation to the book. All in all it is an important aid in deciphering the rhetorics of Nabokov's fiction and glimpsing what it is that makes him such an important author. ... Read more

Product Description
The Enchanter is the Ur-Lolita, the precursor to Nabokov's classic novel. At once hilarious and chilling, it tells the story of an outwardly respectable man and his fatal obsession with certain pubescent girls, whose coltish grace and subconscious coquetry reveal, to his mind, a special bud on the verge of bloom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Vladimir and Dmitri Nabokov
Literary translations are seldom as rewarding to read as if one were able to understand the original, because it is the nature of the art form, to be at the vangard of comprehension in the first place. So something is lost in translation, or rather given over to the translator. In this instance the work of Dmitri is acceptable due to his reverential treatment of what his father could have meant, and to his meticulous study of each word's possible synonyms in both Russian and English.

Can't explain
Though I have no Russian to make a forensic case of what I'm about to say, I have a hunch that Nabokov's Russian at the time of his writing THE ENCHANTER exceeded the mastery of English that Nabokov would later demonstrate with LOLITA et al.

Even in English translation, THE ENCHANTER is more poetry than prose, a phenomenom not unlike Flaubert's MADAME BOVARY.Every sentence quivers with meaning, conveying a sinuous artistry that only the brevity of the piece seem to spoil and mar.Then again it may be the brevity of the piece that its perfection can't do without.

An Appetite for Innocence
Interesting book. Yes, this a precursor to Lolita but only in glimpses. The nameless girl did not have the edge of the later Lolita; the man did not have the dark comedic personality of Humbert Humbert. Also the writing style, for me, was somewhat indulgent, obtuse unlike the accessible prose of the novel. This story stayed with Nabokov for years, later "growing claws." The incubation period was worth it. Another observation: a sleeping young girl appears to be fodder for many, i.e. Nabokov, Garcia Marquez.

No Moral Imperative...
...but is it my own lack of a philosophically absolute morality, or Nabokov's ambiguity, that makes The Enchanter such an uncomfortable book to read? I will confess, to establish my critical credibility, that I have transgressed the Mosaic commandments about my neighbor's wife and, yes, also his maidservant. I didn't get to throw the first stone at Bill Clinton or wife-betraying John McCain for their sleazy behavior. But some behaviors do disgust me, outrage me, enflame me with vengeful wrath. Sexual violence toward children is so creepy that I'd throw away my objections to capital punishment for it. The Enchanter is a novella about the obsession of a middle-aged man with barely pubescent girls, in which the protagonist schemes slyly for months to gain access to such a girl, in the role of her widowd step-father, in order to seduce her and shape her to his fantasies. In the end, his hateful self-control fails and he tries to rape her. She screams, the "world" intervenes, and the hopeful pederast throws himself before a truck in the dark.

There, I've told the story, spoiled the denouement, haven't I? But as always with Nabokov, it's the language that matters anyway, the wily tricks the master plays with our sympathies and susceptibilities, the bitter taste in the mouth this story leaves in the form of the realization that any of us might be as depraved and loathsome to ourselves as the nameless protagonist of The Enchanter. That's one possible reading, anyway, and the one offered by Nabokov's son Dimitri, who translated the novella from Russian to English. Is it my reading? Only provisionally, at best. The vividness of the sexual details and of the sadistic finale seem altogether too artful, so that I fear "somebody out there" will be enjoying them a bit too freely. (There I go, throwing the stone after all.) It's one thing to formulate an acceptable answer to the question of 'what Nabokov meant by such a tale.' It's another to be troubled by the question of 'why Nabokov chose to write such a tale.'

Notice that I've made no mention of a connection between this novella, written in Europe, and a much more famous novel written later in America. Let's leave it that way, with the understanding that many of the same perplexities will arise.

Poetically Precious Pedophilia
"The Enchanter" is an incredible example of what Nabokov can do in less than 100 pages.The book is a portrait of a pedophile, in his own words.Despite the fact that it is a translation, the genius of the original text is carefully preserved by his son, Dmitri's rendition into English.The prose is practically verse.The use of language is pure genius.And the device of using the deviant mind as the story teller is again, just another example of Nabokov's incredible creative ability.

As noted in the afterword by Dmitri, the title of the book most usually translates to "The Magician" but apparently, Nabokov indicated that his intended English translation should be "The Enchanter."Perhaps this is because the pedophile is enchanted with the concept of having a prepubescent girl to bring along through all the various sexualities that ran within his warped persona.

Additionally, the story rolls along as an incredible pace.The last 10 pages being probably the most `enchanting' of all, as the story comes to a crashing crescendo of an ending.Like most of the writings of Nabokov, the book is an example of a brilliant novelist at his very best.Do not fail to read the afterword by Dmitri Nabokov, the translator and son of the author, especially where he disavows any direct relationship to "Lolita."It is recommended to those with a wide vocabulary and a not overly judgmental mind.
... Read more

Product Description
Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist.It tells a love story troubled by incest.But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat.

This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniouslysardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (56)

Need Tea Reviews
Ada, or Ardor takes place on an alternate world called "Antiterra" which has a lot of similarities to our own. This novel follows Van and Ada through the trials and tribulations of their incestuous relationship - first believing they are cousins, only to find out later that they are, in fact, brother and sister. This is one of the last books Nabokov published, and is his longest. Clocking in at 586 pages. I prefer the Vintage prints, they have the nicest covers.

The novel has an interesting format. It is broken up into five parts and written as a memoir from the eyes of Van, with comments here and there from Ada. Each part is successively shorter than the other. At the back is an appendix written by Vivian Darkbloom, which is an anagrammatic pseudonym for his name. Nabokov's writing is, as always, spectacular with beautiful flowing prose of fantastic proportions - molding and shaping the words to his use which are amazing feats to witness. He exploits his spectacular knowledge of the English language to great success, but not only that, he incorporates his fluency of Russian and French into the passages.

Each of the prominent characters are clearly defined. I felt really sorry for Lucette (Ada's sister). Her all consuming devotion and love for Van which she tried to get him to reciprocate even though she knew he never would give in to her desires, but yet she still tried time and time again. I never doubted for one second, the passion Van and Ada had for each other, and thought it was touching how they kept their feelings for one another even though they were separated for great lengths of time, and despite the fact that they had to deal with one of them being involved with someone else.

If you aren't accustomed to Nabokov's style by now then you should know that there are squeamish themes throughout his story. One of them being incest - Van and Ada, but also Lucette - and then the other bigger one for me is when the main characters finally have sex for the first time. She was 12, and he was 14. I'm sure that's not acceptable by anyone's standards, even today. There's also quite a lot of snark and satire about what people consider to be excellent literature and I enjoyed these bits as well.

I would not recommend this book to casual readers though, as the difficult language would be quite off-putting and they probably wouldn't attempt to slog through it (appendix included). I thought that despite his wonderful writing, Nabokov focused too much on crafting the languages he incorporated (though it was a seamless blend), which distracted me from the actual story. The abrupt point of view switches and then the long philosophical rumination on space and time in part four was difficult for me to get into. This is not a book that you're going to speed through, you're probably going to read this very slowly to pick up all the intricacies he inserted into his prose. Nabokov also alludes to many, many other novels and works that if you haven't heard of, or read, you'll be lost (I know I was). If you want a challenge, or are a lover of Nabokov, then I would definitely recommend this book.

Sawing the usual saws.
This being about the dozenth VN novel I've read or attempted to read (why continue?: my astonishment at some people's praise for these things), I have to say I was rather pleasantly surprized over the first few chapters, because the prose had an energy and spontaneity and verve I had come not to expect from this author's more usual laboredly self-conscious attempts to be literary ("Look! I do what Gogol did! The same! See!?").

But it wasn't long before the old familiar VN started to dominate the proceedings: leaden alliteration, absurdly incongruous with the general verbosity; the same old saws and ranting about his laundry list of esthetical defectives (even though I agree with him more than most); aside from the usual vessels of his usual opinions, the rest of the population (I won't say characters, b/c VN doesn't know a character from an axe to grind) being puppet morons for him to belittle and berate; and the continued preoccupation with pedophilia (advanced on the pretext of criticizing the critic for criticizing the author in making the association)--with the pornography being fairly gross here.

Sure, it's like a very clever crossword puzzle (if you don't find such tiresome). I recommend reading any of his books with index cards, to organize your dissection. The clues are all there, and they're really no deeper than the author's agenda of simple-minded philosophizing and, again, ranting--every string and stone to tug or turn stinking from the grip of his fingers. To me the effect is like being stuck next to a drunk on a bus.

I think a comparison to Beckett or Kafka is enlightening--exactly because of the incomparability. Any of them is apt to insert a rather ludicrous or inept figure, a seeming side-note, here or there. For VN, such will generally be an object of derision. But it's precisely in these spots where the great writers open another door, and these absurd figures spring to life in drama or complexity. Think in Kafka of a page obsessed with his uniform, or the feckless lawyer. It's not a moral objection, to not be mean to people. It's just bad technique. It's a failure to write a part where there could be a part written. It's tiresome and tedious and dull. I think I have to agree with those critics who recommend against novels of ideas, or argumentation masked as art.

Maddeningly memorable, allusive & elusive
N.B.: Three stars by comparison with Nabokov's best works, not three stars as given to your usual author!

This uneven yet memorable novel combined two earlier Nabokov works, a non-fictional treatise on time and a fantastic tale of an alternate earth, "Letters from Terra." Such a composition, which salvaged parts of these into the novel published a decade later, "Ada," may account for the awkward style, rambling pace, and shifting focus of this intermittently engrossing but ultimately diffused tale of lovers Ada and Veen. I read this after "Bend Sinister" (see my recent review), "Pnin," "Pale Fire," and "Lolita." Many readers of Nabokov recommend these before the lesser rewards of the much longer "Ada." I agree.

My interest in the two main characters never sparked until very late. Lucette, by comparison, in her earnest courting of Veen, came alive much more as she pursued a shipboard romance. The tone, the diction, the energy all altered, for the better. I get the impression that such episodes marked a lengthy gestation for this novel, and that Nabokov labored to produce narratives that connected disparate scenes he'd previously worked out more in isolation from each other in terms of a larger plot. The novel certainly takes its time, especially in the first half, to tell you often very little of import. The later parts, curiously, speed up the pace somewhat, but themselves come from attenuated periods scattered throughout Veen's long and often uninteresting, however fantastically imagined in fitful starts, life.

I must say unlike others who've reviewed this novel that I found later sections here and there better crafted than earlier ones, or at least Nabokov capitalized on the emotional payoff for characters who often in earlier chapters fail to involve you, caricatured or stylized as they clunk about. who lives as if some Henry James protagonist in a world where Nabokov appears to ape or mimic Borges (lots of forking paths, and at one unconvincing point Veen is shot dead if only momentarily), Jules Verne, and Proust, as well as countless Continental authors! Nabokov, perhaps like Joyce, never lets you forget the artificiality of the tale that his intellectually superior semi-omniiscient narrator (usually Veen, altered by an editorial conceit to tell his tale retrospectively, sort of!) relates, but unlike Joyce, the texture of the mundane world too rarely enters "Ada," for all its plethora of minute detail.

Yet, although the overwhelming amount of inside jokes (I read the Library of America ed. with Brian Boyd's endnotes as well as "Vivian Darkbloom's" and often tired of flipping back and forth twice over) in Russian, French, English, and various other Terran or Anti-Terran idioms did not entertain me much, parts of this smug, hermetic, and very self-satisfied tale managed to intrigue me at least for a few pages.

Philosophically, time conceived as a fissure or slit along which we move out of the unknowable eternity previous to our life and then back into it as we age was similarly explained in "Bend Sinister," so I'm not sure it needed to be expounded again in "Ada" totalling perhaps at fifty times the length for that topic. (1.42, p. 252. Libr. Amer. ed.) Suffice to say: "Time is memory in the making. . . Life, love, libraries , have no future." Even Veen despite his privileged life finds, in evocative sections towards the end, his own mortality slowing him, as "the Tortoise of the Past will never overtake our Achilles of the future, no matter how we parse ourselves on our cloudy backboards."

Veen sums up his creator's method with his "philosophic prose" about "a treatise on the Texture of Time, an investigation of its veily substance, with illustrative metaphors gradually increasing, very gradually building up a logical love story, going from past to present, blossoming as a concrete story, and just as gradually reversing analogies and disintegrating again into bland abstraction."Ada, for once, shows insight about the worth of all this talk, and for me, of Nabokov's expectation that we should be as enchanted with his often cruel characters as he seems to be-- seems the qualifier. Ada wonders "if the attempt to discover those things is worth the stained glass. We can know the time, we can know a time. We can never know Time. Our senses are not meant to perceive it. It is like--" (so ends part 4, pp. 448-51)

The fragile wonder of life breaks into these thickly scaffolded pages, and their surface glows for a bit before the tedious prose again dulls the effect of their burst, all too true to life! In their old age, which in parts becomes tender when in the past I sensed it supercilious at least as conveyed, Ada "never refused to help him achieve the more and more precious, because less and less frequent, gratification of a fully shared sunset. He saw reflected in her everything that his fastidious and fierce spirit sought in life. (5.3, p. 456) Grudgingly, I in the final episodes began to admire the couple more than I had for most of the previous 450 pages. In their decline at their life's sunset, they became more human, and less artificial.

Van wonders if we are "really" free. He recalls Chinese caged birds who on wakening hurl themselves against their bars as if by wild reflex only to then settle down each day to their routine. (1.20) One's life is imagined as raw film footage that we always think we will have the chance to go back and edit and retouch "before death with its clapstick closes the scene." (1.38, p. 202). Appropriately, one character's last moments attain real poignancy: "what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude." (3.6, p. 396).

So, a meager if sufficient satisfaction that kept me plowing through dozens more chapters in which I frankly cared less about Veen. For a novel set on an alternate earth, there's both too much extraneous material and too little for this aspect to attain vividness. Nabokov appears to have given us his rough draft more than a finished product, but being who he is, I still remain suspicious that as one of the cleverest of authors, he may well know more than I do about his "true" intent. For example, in the middle I began comparing (negatively for me) the novel to Henry James; within a page or so, there's an aside to "Dr. Henry's oil of Atlantic prose" which Boyd glossed for its nod to Jamesian style! (3.5, p. 388) However, if you wonder what James crossed with brother William and blended with steampunk, late-Victorian reveries, Scrabble, and a splendid section (the original kernel of the novel) on that fin-de-siecle's invention of Villa Venus and the "floramor") on what brothels might once have been upon a time, this may be the bedside book you've never known you've been waiting for.

Between the ha-ha an Aroma of Antiterra
Serious fiction is very difficult, requiring multiple readings, notes, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and it always results in higher entropy decorating the study.It is cruel and comic.Ada or Ardor demands an intense sort of dictionary big enough to sit on, and for those not familiar with the peculiarities of Russian history, Bosch, Temporal mechanics, Tolstoy, and Orchids--encyclopedias are a must.Several if possible.This is not to be lightly thrown in your shopping cart with `Tuesdays with Morrie', `The Davinci Code', and `Breakfast of Champions' for the sake of some lightheaded intellectual fix.Reading the back cover and casually announcing `this looks interesting, how about I give this a try' will not do.Young laymen and lemans keep out, I implore.

Ada or Ardor often receives criticism (John Updike is famous for bad mouthing it) for being clumsy and impossible, tossing those lemans I mentioned out with a thud.Pale Fire receives similar hate mail.Nabokov achieved a kind of artistic perfection in Lolita, most any decent reader can shake hands and nod to that, but with Pale Fire Nabokov starts to twist fiction's arm and mold it into something more dynamic.The Real Life of Sebastian Knight did something similar with biography, though not with the same degree of excellence.Nabokov bends fiction further, parodying in Ada numerous intellectual disciplines and writing styles (both academic and creative styles) to deal with a variety of planes: physics, metaliterature, astrology, metaphysics, time, literary theory, consciousness, linguistics, etcetera.

So with the intellectual puns and obscure facts, why read?Artistic joy, literary excellence.Fun.Read it for fun.It's his best as far as I understand it, and I've read Lolita six times and Pale Fire three.Transparent Things four times.And I have a better grasp of the components of those novels.Ada and I really are only acquainted through two very intense readings, but the structure and other components that I have grasped (and that in itself excels the other three) mesmerize every time I read: "a pretty plaything stranded along the forget-me-nots of a brook; butterflies and butterfly orchids in the margin of the romance; a misty view described by marble steps; a doe at gaze in the ancestral park; and much, much more." and close the back cover each time with a sort of spiritual tranquility.This is a work for rereaders and scientists.

And in Ada or Ardor, W. B. Yates is a physicist that is kidnapped by a laundryman and transported to Tartary.

Ada, our ardors and arbors
"Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle", Nabokov's longest novel, is also, indisputably, his most involute. Without having read his entire oeuvre (nearly half-way through!) I can still assert this with confidence - and I'm sure most Nabokov fans would concur. Those who have read "Lolita" or "Pale Fire" will already be aware of the density of his writing, his penchant for allusions, puns, his rouguish tendency to deceive the reader. Some readers object to this; they like their prose "simple and sincere", easy to digest, as straightforward as possible. I would advise such readers to stay far, far away from this book.

I must concede, my first attempt wasn't a success. I got about half-way through before slamming it down in a frenzied rage (as I am wont to do). It was exhausting. "Nabokov has gone too far," I remember saying. But a few weeks later I had the strange urge to return to it, as if summoned by the characters. I'm glad I did - I'm glad they did.

Even for the Nabokov aficionado, accustomed to the density, "Ada..." proves startlingly abstruse. The first fifty pages in particular - in which he focuses on the genealogy of the family (the prefatory family tree is indispensible) and the Terra/Antiterra business - are apt to bewilder and discourage the ardent reader. It does then become less challenging, as the protagonist and "writer" of the book, Van Veen, travels to Ardis, the magnificent New England manor, where he meets and falls in love with his cousin (whom we discover, in the first chapter, is actually his sister). Their life-long love affair is persistently condemned and thwarted. But keep in mind that Nabokov himself isn't interested in condemning or advocating incest. As he said in an interview: "ActuallyI don't give a damn for incest one way or another. I merely like the 'bl' sound in siblings, bloom, blue, bliss, sable."

But the book is more than a 600-page cornucopia of enticing allusions and puns. It is an astonishing paean to memory, love and imagination. The prominent criticism of Nabokov's work is that he is so over-concerned with stylistics that his novels lack depth or poignancy (ugly word, but apt!). This accusation is not wholly unjust - at times he goes overboard; maybe he'd even admit that himself - but when he's at his best, Nabokov is unparalleled (well, nearly), both in emotional and aesthetic literary perfection.

I couldn't say that "Ada..." was Nabokov's greatest achievement - "Lolita" remains for me his total masterpiece - but this may well change upon rereading the book, which I most certainly will do. ... Read more

Product Description
Nabokov's fourth novel, The Eye is as much a farcical detectivestory as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes ofidentities and appearances. Nabokov's protagonist, Smurov, is alovelorn, excruciatingly self-conscious Russian émigr&eacutee;living in prewar Berlin, who commits suicide after being humiliated bya jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indignities in theafterlife.
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Customer Reviews (17)

Neti-Neti Meditation, Nabokov Style
"Kashmarin had borne away yet another image of Smurov.Does it make any difference which?For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases." The "Eye" is a search for the "I," a neti-neti ("I am not this, not this") search for Self, Nabokov style.

Pavel Somov, Ph.D., author of "Eating the Moment" [...]

Eye Scream Ewe Scream We All Scream...
... for more Nabokov! If only he'd been as prolific as Anthony Trollope. This short novella, written in Berlin in 1930, is not nearly the apex of Nab's oeuvre, but it's awfully good. Even when no one could mistake his lepidopterine syntax, it's fun to see him writing in a new genre with every book. The Eye is a tale in the 'doppelgänger' tradition of Poe's William Wilson, Hawthorne's Wakefield, and Melville's The Confidence Man, though there's no reason to assume that Nabokov was aware of his American forerunners. Since the whole novella is built around the reader's dawning suspicions, I can't say much more about the plot without spoiling your pleasure.

The Marxist Revolution makes a cameo appearance in The Eye - its Russian title was closer to 'The Spy' - as in nearly all of Nab's books. In a brief dismissal of historical determinism, he writes: "Luckily no such laws exist: a toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection. Everything is fluid, everything depends on chance, and all in vain were the efforts of that crabbed bougeois in Victorian checkered trousers, author of Das Kapital, fruit of insomnia and migraine. There is a titillating pleasure in looking back at the past and asking oneself 'What would have happened if...' and substituting one chance occurrence for another, observing how, from a gray, barren, humdrum moment in one's life, there grows forth a marvelous rosy event that in reality had failed to flower. A mysterious thing, this branching structure of life..." That, my friends, is not only an eloquent dismissal of Marxism but also a fine statement of evolutionary contingency.

Just one more passage from Nab's own words, intended to entice your reading:
"And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear, I swear I am happy. I have realized that the only happiness in this world is to observe, to spy, to watch, to scrutinize one self and others, to be nothing but a big, slightly vitreous, somewhat bloodshot, unblinking eye. I swear that this is happiness."
Okay, I'll accept that, as long as this eye has another Nabokov novel to read.

Absolutely exquisite
This is Nabokov's shortest novel, and I think one of the most exquisitely structured books ever. Each word and sentence is carefully crafted, polished and placed into position to create a superb portrait of fractured, then reunited identity. A miniature masterpiece.

The Eye, The Spy
In this short but exquisite novel, Nabokov returns to a familiar subject; that of a Russian spy in Berlin.The book explains that there are Russian spies all over and that they act as the best of friends and neighbors, until they take you under arrest or worse.

The story depicts the interactions of one spy named Smurov, whom the reader is not informed is also the narrator until almost the very end.Nabokov takes us through a significant time period, when Smurov sees himself through the eyes of others, not through his own existence.As a spy, he does not really exist.He is there to observe others and to keep his own identity a secret.

Nabokov takes us through a bit of surrealistic writing as he indicates that what Smurov sees is all a dream.Yet the reality for Smurov of life is this hiding in society, this spying and because of it, such a person can really only understand himself, through the reflections of him by others.This all culminates with the admission of Smurov that he is happy, when he is observing, happy when he sees himself through that mirror of others, happy when he is invisible and yet observant.This existence is what Nabokov transmits to the reader.

The book is recommended to all lovers of Nabokov's truly modern fictional approach.The book will entertain and delight and all in a mere 104 pages.It is well worth the read.

Just Get It

This book is quite short.In fact, it is so short that you have absolutely no excuse for not buying it to find out, for yourself, if it really is worth 5 stars.

This is the work that turned me on to Nobokov.After reading this I was awestricken.The storyline, the mysteries, surprises, and most of all the descriptive power in this book are phenomenal.

By the way, it is.

... Read more

Product Description
Some of my characters are, no doubt, pretty beastly, but I really don't care, they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral facade--demons placed there merely to show that they have been booted out.'--Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions--With this quote Leland de la Durantaye launches his elegant and incisive exploration of the ethics of art in the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov. Focusing on Lolita but also addressing other major works (especially Speak, Memory and Pale Fire), the author asks whether the work of this writer whom many find cruel contains a moral message and, if so, why that message is so artfully concealed. Style is Matter places Nabokov's work once and for all into dialogue with some of the most basic issues concerning the ethics of writing and of reading itself.De la Durantaye argues that Humbert's narrative confession artfully seduces the reader into complicity with his dark fantasies and even darker acts until the very end, where he expresses his bitter regret for what he has done. In this sense, Lolita becomes a study in the danger of art, the artist's responsibility to the real world, and the perils and pitfalls of reading itself. In addition to Nabokov's fictions, de la Durantaye also draws on his nonfiction writings to explore Nabokov's belief that all genuine art is deceptive?as is nature itself. Through de la Durantaye's deft and compelling writing, we see that Nabokov learned valuable lessons in mimicry and camouflage from the intricate patterns of the butterflies he adored. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Nothing novel
have studied Nabokov extensively and was hoping this would add to the corpus of existing gems in the field of Nabokov studies (by which I include figures like Rorty and Andrews, but especially Kevin Ohi). Unfortunately despite two reads I could only find one thing that was sufficiently new or interesting to remark upon, namely De la Durantaye's fresh reinterpretation of (if I remember his name rightly off the top of my head) Gerard de Vries's interpretation of the 'old poet's' lines in Lolita. De Vries made the shrewd observation that these lines were a paraphrastic summary of a passage from Poe's 'Poetic Principle', whilst Durantaye shows how this is not as straightforward as it may have seemed to De Vries. Nonetheless, if you're serious about studying Nabokov this book does not provide sufficient new insight into Nabokov Studies. You'd be better off with David Andrews's study of Aestheticism and Lolita, as well as the essays to be found in the Nabokov Studies journal that ran for a few years and many of the other writers that have worked in this field. Kevin Ohi's analysis is excellent in his study of the erotic child (Innocence and Rapture). Rorty's analysis is flawed but forms part of a great work (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity). Anyone starting out in Nabokov Studies may want to read through Lolita: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism edited by Christine Clegg. De La Durantaye's work is certainly not boring, but I think apart from the novel insight I mentioned above, it's a step back in the field rather than a step forward.

Criticism worth the time
I seldom read literary criticism, just because I'm lazy, and like the fiction itself more, but this book is that rare thing, a piece of criticism that enlightens rather than obscures.Although De La Durantaye is occasionally self-indulgent--spending a half-page too much on the title of Pale Fire, for example--most of the book is admirably direct and on-topic.Side issues, like Nabokov's extreme dislike of Freudianism, are delightful extras.For readers who like Lolita, but feel uncomfortable about liking it; or for any devoted lover of V. Nabokov's works, because De La Durantaye's comments illuminate them all. ... Read more

Product Description
Master literary sleuth unearths Nabokov's life from his work.On the eve of the controversial, posthumous publication of The Original of Laura, Michael Maar follows his critically acclaimed The Two Lolitas with a revealing new perspective on Vladimir Nabokov’s life and work. Hunting down long-hidden clues in the novels, and using the themes that run through Nabokov’s fiction to illuminate the life that produced them, Maar constructs a compelling psychological and philosophical portrait. Characteristically graceful and engaging, Speak, Nabokov offers a vital new perspective on the twentieth- century master. ... Read more

Product Description
Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a twnety-two-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him.Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, he embarks on a "perilous, daredevil project"--an illegal attempt to re-enter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919.He succeeds--but at a terrible cost. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Yes Sir, Good Work
I read this once, mostly out-loud, so I definitely won't claim to understand it on the deeper level of some of the other reviewers.What great translation! So much to learn about language - I can hardly believe sometimes that the sentences weren't originally written in English, they come out so naturally, with such an extremely high quality of aesthetic sound. Certainly a rather autobiographical novel ... as I get back to reading other stories by Nabakov I am confident I understand them better, getting a much better sense of the man by reading this one.

Tolstoyan read
This novel by Vladimir Nabokov is beautifully done and reminds me more of Tolstoy than anything else. Certainly it doesn't have that scope; the resemblance is in the construction of characters and their thought. I enjoyed it very much.

The Most Ironic Title in Literature
Edelweiss? Noble White, the shy alpine flower that so quickly vanishes after spring. Are we readers to look for meaning in Nabokov's choice of the name Martin Edelweiss for his focal character? A good deal is said about the name early in the book, and we're reminded of it at crucial moments throughout. Just a few pages of Nabokov's so-carefully-crafted prose inclines this reader to suppose that nothing in "Glory" is merely incidental, that every detail is laden with pertinence. Whatever else one says about this novel, the first fact is that it's gloriously written. Every sentence snaps the reader's mind into focus. Every description is a poem in itself. Every characterization is a full dramatic portrait of individual flesh and blood.

Martin Edelweiss is a frivolous young man embedded among Russian emigres utterly trivialized by the Bolshevik Revolution, about which we hear only frivolous rumors and reports in ephemeral newsprint. The only position Martin's querulous society seems to take toward the momentous events in their homeland is to wish they hadn't happened, but make no mistake, this a novel about the Revolution, seen through a lens of irrelevance. This is also a novel about the meaning of being Russian, though Nabokov conveys his meaning through the subtlest indirection. There's no ambiguity whatsoever about the ending of the novel. The meaning is as clear as plasma and as ominous as a drum-roll to a prisoner awaiting execution, but I do not choose to pre-empt anyone's reading excitement by declaring the obvious.

At the same time, "Glory" is a coming-of-age novel, similar to other such novels about young men going off to college. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" and E.M. Forster's "The Longest Journey" might offer interesting comparisons. In all three, a sensitive young man confronts the tawdriness of the intellectual life, slips into depression over his own mediocrity, falls hopelessly in love with a disdainful beauty while at the same time exploring lust with more accessible lasses, and wrestles with the identity of a seemingly more well-prepared friend. Martin, however, isn't a titan waiting to be awakened to his own worth at the end of the novel. Nabokov takes pain to show us that Martin is NOT a poet, not a budding genius of any sort, just a modestly intelligent everyman of no particular bent. In fact, Martin's only talent seems to be at tennis. Like a young George Orwell, Martin stumbles into a brief romance with the simple life of honest toil, dwelling incognito for a 'chapter' in a wine-growing village in southern France. But, like most of Martin's experiences, this pastoral interlude sinks quickly into the chasm of memory. Above all, this is a novel about memory. It begins with Martin's memories of childhood. Martin's perceptions are all foreshadowed, and his actions are all predetermined, by his memories. Even the passing moment is no more than a memory.

Martin doesn't tell his story in the first person. Nabokov clings to Martin's shoulder like a personal daemon, or to be blunt, like a 19th C omniscient narrator. When suddenly, in the last chapter, the novelist shifts his perch to another shoulder, it's both a brilliant literary trick and a lucid statement of Martin's fate.

"Glory" is a translation from Russian of an early novel by a writer who went on to create far more famous books in English. Perhaps that explains why it's less widely read than the Forster or Fitzgerald novels mentioned above. It's the best book of the three by far, and proves beyond a doubt that Nabokov could write traditional narrative as brilliantly as the more idiosyncratic interior surrealism for which he is famous.

Glorious
Glory is the comic/tragic tale of a young man whose fantasies of heroism come to replace reality and eventually lead to his downfall.The theme is simple, but because the novel is set between WWI and WWII, Glory might be best described as a somewhat cynical allegory about the plight of the "Lost Generation"--those ex-patriots who retreated to Paris during the 20s and 30s. Martin, our protagonist, while not an American in Paris, most certainly is lost. Having been forced into exile during the Russian Revolution, Martin, who is a highly Europeanized hybrid, finds himself adrift in Europe, wandering from Switzerland, to England, to Germany in an aimless pursuit of what to do with himself. Eventually he falls in love with the sulky, dark-eyed temptress, Sonia. But that, of course, solves nothing. Martin does not know who he is, where he has come from, or where he is going. Falling in love merely heightens his anomie.

If this sounds somewhat uninspiring as a plot, you are right! There is very little action of note, and even less character development (which, in any event, Nabokov disdained). The appeal of this book is the sheer force of Nabokov's gorgeous writing. His exquisite attention to detail, his amazing insights into states of mind set him above all other writers. Perhaps you think I am overstating, but who else can take you to a river in Cambridge, make you smell the air, see the sky, feel as Martin feels, so deftly, so economically and with such great sensitivity? Nabokov, a synthaesthete, has a chef's awareness of how to spice his novels.A dash of this, a hint of that - he knows which sensations to describe in order to create a harmonious whole. There are passages in this book which I read and re-read, astounded by the clarity, the precision, the sheer beauty of Nabokov's prose.


Glory is a literary delicacy, best savored slowly. Take your time consuming it, and you will be well-satisfied.

Exquisite
In spite of multinational references in the book, "Glory" is quintessentially American. Martin Edelweiss (22 years old) is as every bit American as Rabbit Angstrom or Benny Profane (22 and 23 respectively). The unremitting chiseling oneself out is more in character with Rocky Balboa than with Raskolnikov.

Martin is a bit of a Holden Caulfield, sensitive and highly original. But instead of defining himself as the negation of the surrounding world, Martin has an inner flame that carries him forth. Stepping off the train in the middle of nowhere in Provence, and settling there. Going back on the perilous cliff just to prove to himself that he could do it. Crossing a dangerous state frontier. Even washing himself daily from his ubiquitous collapsible bathtub. All these are emanations of Martin's spirit. And in the book he, the least purposeful one, is the only one possessing it. He is that miraculous lonely green branch sprouting out of a withered tree. The book, in fact, is no less radical than Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" in its assertion that only according to your peculiar self is it worth living. The theme is not new, but the variation on it is presented with remarkable elegance. Only the preface, narcissistic and supercilious, is regrettably dissonant with the rest of the book.

And, naturally, the language. What a beautiful serving, what a feast! It is a hillock of beaten egg whites, under the dappled sunlight of a linden tree alley, smiling at you with all the sun-ignited freckles of its icy crystals. Weightless and radiant, it is a young steed, now trotting, now galloping, but always having the air of freshness about it. As is typically with Nabokov's novels, the pace of the book seems maddeningly slow, until one surrenders to its flow and lets their senses resonate with its spell. Nabokov savors language like a wine connoisseur savors wine: lingering with it, swirling the words, slowly, slowly, until they reveal their intricate bouquet.

Nabokov's lightness of touch, akin to Pushkin's, makes reading his books irresistible, like reading the best books in childhood, the ones to which you had to run home after school just to indulge yourself more.
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In this collection of interviews, articles, and editorials, Nabakov ranges over his life, art, education and politics amoung other subjects. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

a Man
The title says it all. The last section of the book, some twenty pages consists of primarily lepidoptera papers which may or may not interest fiction devotees of N's fiction. His generous use of the epithet "philistine" may rouse some prejudiceagainst N.'s apparently pharisaical and insolent notions on literature, psychology, politics and such, but he always is sure to qualify those strong opinions as solely his own; in large, he abstains from truth claims that would make his book little more than the exegesis of a Pharisee. Besides, one doesn't read a book of opinions for the author's Truth (with a "T!"), unless that is, you are a Kurt Vonnegut follower. Great insights, humor and opinions from a great author. Minus a star or two for a certain degree of repetitiveness.

A Nabokov fan, disillusioned by this book
Before I first encountered STRONG OPINIONS, I was a Nabokov fan. Reading this collection, however, changed my view of him for good. The man's weird animus against literally hundreds of major authors (Cervantes, Camus, Balzac, Mann, Stendhal, Lorca, Faulkner--you name 'em!) is terribly mean-spirited and small. His attacks on Freud get tiresome, and one begins to wonder if he ever did read much Freud in any depth. He also goes after other leading thinkers and even lets fly against, in his words, "Einstein's slick formulae" (I'm really quoting). And his defense of the U.S. war on Vietnam isincredibly ignorant and simplistic, even stupid. Nabokov the artist was a major presence who altered the shape of literature. Nabokov the man, by contrast, was a nasty, dogmatic, narrow-minded little fellow who couldn't countenance any aesthetic but his own.
I'm not the only Nabokovophile who has had this "conversion." I know several others who've had the same experience.

A portrait of the artist as a man
The book includes interviews, literary essays and five short articles on Lepidoptera. Since the book covers the main themes in Nabokov's life on one hand and is carefully compiled by Nabokov himself on the other, it presents a kind of self-portrait. Its author was a remarkably relentless rewriter, who noted that "[he] rewrote several times every word that [he] has ever published" and that even his recounting of the last night's dream to his wife was "but the first draft", and so this book is the result of no less a meticulous labor than his novels are. It presents a carefully drafted portrait, at times blatantly revealing, at times guardedly mystifying, but always elegantly or freshly phrased.

In his "Lectures on Literature", Nabokov mentions a character in "Bleak House", a man appearing only for a sentence or two just to help carry in from the street an old man in his chair. He gets a tuppence for his labors, tosses it in the air, catches it over-handed, and leaves. Nabokov points out that this one word, "over-handed", makes all the difference: it is a drop of color which renders even an incidental character alive. It seems that Nabokov's own public persona is similarly brought to life with the stories of borrowing a television set (which otherwise he did not watch) to see the first man landing on the Moon, or of having driven a car twice in his life (both times disastrously).

Some of the essays presented in the book are real gems. The 4-page piece "On Adaptation" is a beautiful critique of Robert Lowell's unfortunate rendition in English of Mandelshtam's famous poem. The highly amusing penultimate sentence, where Nabokov applies to one of Lowell's poems the techniques Lowell used in his version of Mandelshtam's, makes the most expressive argument for literal translation and for preserving the writer's intent. In a way, this one sentence makes a better case for Nabokov's verbatim translation of "Eugene Onegin" than the much longer if very engaging article answering Wilson's critique of Nabokov's translation of Pushkin's masterpiece.

Another essay, "Inspiration", provides a rare glimpse into the writer's sanctum sanctorum: a detailed description of a writer's interaction with his muse. Nabokov presents here several examples of what he considers inspired writing and expresses hope that students will learn to recognize it in the books they read. The students of Nabokov will certainly recognize inspiration in his own writing, revealing itself in elegant phrasing and fierce independence of thought and making his answers even to the most mundane questions worth reading.

Strong opinions is the term
This collection of interviews and articles is essential reading for lovers of Nabokov's fiction. Throughout he presents himself as a full blown iconoclast, presenting in lucid prose (Nabokov never answered interview questions without having time to prepare beforehand), delicious vignettes into his character and theories of literature.

Here you will find, a staunch defence of why he translated Pushkin literally (and a funny damning of his erstwhile foil, Edmund Wilson's misplaced criticism; reflections on the course of his triptych life (Russia, Europe America); how his literary inspiration comes (the complete novel wells up inside him before it is written then curls itself out); a refusal to allow any social message to his work; the pleasures of writing (the tingle in the spine); his condemnation of a host of cannonical authors - Faulkner, Hemmingway, Conrad, Dostoevski etc.; and most importantly, the leitmoteif that runs through his thought, an extended diatribe against the vulgarities and pervasiveness of 'poshlost' (see p.100 in the paperback edition). If you absorb this defintition, and agree with its tenets, you will start to notice instances of poshlost spreading like a rash all over contemporary letters, films and journalism.

In addition there are a couple of beautifully written pieces on butterfly hunting, a perfect subject for Nabokov's perceptive, aesthetic mind, and a lifelong passion of his.

Nabokov in a nutshell
This is a pretty good collection of Interviews with Nabokov and Nabokov's letters to editors and stuff like that. For people who want to find out more there's the comprehensive two volume biography of Nabokov by Brian Boyd.

Nabokov's opinions in a nutshell?

Thought everything written by James Joyce was completely mediocre except for "Ulysses," which towered above the rest of his ouvre as one of the supreme literary masterpieces of the 20th century. Loved Flaubert and Proust and Chateaubriand, did not like Stendhal (simple and full of cliches) or Balzac (full of absurdities). Loved Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" (considered it the greatest novel of the 19th century) and "Death of Ivan Illych," hated "Resurrection" and "Kreutzer sonata." Liked Gogol, despised Dostoevsky as a melodramatic mystic (he even once gave a student an F in his course for disagreeing with him). Loathed Conrad and Hemingway, but liked the description of the fish in "Old Man and the Sea" and the short story "Killers." Hated Andre Gide, T.S.Eliot, Faulkner, Thomas Mann and D.H.Lawrence and considered them all frauds. Thought Kafka was great, Orwell mediocre. Despised Camus and Sartre, considered Celine a second rater, but liked H.G.Wells. Loved Kubrick's film of Lolita (thought it was absolutely first-rate in every way) but later in the '70s regretted that Sue Lyon (though instantly picked by Nabokov himself along with Kubrick out of a list of thousands) had been too old for the part & suggested that Catherine Demongeot, the boyish looking 11 year old who appeared in Louis Malle's 1960 film "Zazie dans le Metro" would've been just about perfect to induce the right amount of moral repulsion in the audience towards Humbert (and prevent them from enjoying the work on any superficial level other than the purely artistic). Liked avant-garde writers like Borges and Robbe-Grillet and even went out of his way to see Alain Resnais' film with Robbe-Grillet: "Last Year at Marienband." Didn't care for the films of von Sternberg or Fritz Lang, loved Laurel and Hardy. Made a point of saying how much he hated Lenin when it was fashionable to blame the disasters of the Soviet Union on Stalin. Supported the War in Vietnam and sent President Johnson a note saying he appreciated the good job he was doing bombing Vietnam. Never drove an automobile in his life & his wife was the one who drove him through the United States onscientific butterfly-hunting expeditions, all through the many locales & motels & lodges that later appeared in "Lolita."

Seem interesting? You're bound to be offended even if Nabokov is one of your favorite writers. Genius or madman? I would say both, the 'divine madness' of the greatest of artists. Highly recommended for a peek inside the artistically fertile mind, and the tensions that need to be maintained to produce it. ... Read more

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Not only is this volume endlessly quotable, it also reads like a greatepistolary novel--fraught with high thought, high drama, and thedelightfully unexpected. Who would have guessed that Nabokov would askHugh Hefner, "Have you ever noticed how the head and ears of yourBunny resemble a butterfly in shape, with an eyespot on onehindwing?" ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sharp. Funny. Exciting.
I have never read Lolita, and I don't know if I will. But I can certainly see now that it was written by a great writer who cared about his work and his family. Who would expect a book of "selected letters" to be a page-turner? But it is. Nabokov's example of hard work, uncompromising attention to detail (what other kind is there? I'm sure he would ask), respect for knowledge, humility when ignorant, and warmth towards family and friends is a pleasure to read. Also an education, whether it be about scientific naming of butterflies, or about the wide variety of Nabokov's writings -- whoever thinks Lolita is not for them can choose from other stories, poetry, or a literal prose translation of Eugene Onegin.

P.s. Letters collected, arranged, and translated as necessary by his loving and loved son. How nice, then, that I rediscovered this book on my shelf, marked with a birthday present note from my father, waiting for when I had the time to read it. Thanks, Dad! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Fascinating look at the changing image of Lolita through history, film adaptations, and references in the news
I never got through Nabokov's Lolita (sorry!). I tried reading it years ago and stopped over halfway through. I just found it... boring. But reading this book has made me want to reread it (maybe I was just too young to appreciate it the first time?).

This book combines literary criticism, film criticism, and criticism of media and pop culture. The author's descriptions of Nabokov and the book are good enough that you don't need to be well-versed in either. But it does help if you've read at least some of the book. I was completely fascinated by the way he describes how the image and concept of Lolita have changed based on cultural contexts and twisted to fit the needs of artists or histrionic media outlets. He touches on such a wide variety of topics that I was always making notes on things to research further in depth, books to read, films to rent. (Topics include: Lewis Carroll's fascination with children, depiction of romance involving children and child actors throughout history and in modern-day films, how the news changes in treating accounts of underage sex and rape and assigns blame...)

An interesting, worthwhile read.

Lolita as a "candy woman"
It is often complained in the postmodern literary world that Lolita did not have a voice in Vladimir Nabokov's famous novel.But in fact it is one of the great accomplishments of that novel that indeed her voice came through loud and clear, even though filtered through an "unreliable" and self-serving narrator in the person of Humbert Humbert.Not only did her voice come through in an indelible way that still enchants readers (and occasioned this book), but so too did her intentions and her actions.Had it been otherwise we would not be discussing her today.

I like to compare what Nabokov did in Lolita to what Mark Twain did in Huck Finn.Both novels are jewels of American literature and both novels are first-person singular narratives.Both narrators can be considered unreliable in the literary sense, Huck because he is mostly unlettered and presumably lacks any literary skills, and Humbert because of his bias.The trick for the novelist when using such a conceit is to make the world (that the narrator sees and describes) authentic and vivid despite the narrator's shortcomings.This is not easy to do.

But what Graham Vickers is getting at here in this splendid cultural "biography" of Lolita is that the persona of Lolita has not only been corrupted by the popular culture but to insist that she never was the girl that she has become, that "Lolita" has become a catchword for something Nabokov's little girl never was.In America she is the Lolita seen in the famous photo of Sue Lyon (who starred in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film) behind heart-shaped sunglasses licking a lollipop.In Japan she has become Lolicon or Loligoth, a pornographic sub genre of child-like sexual objects.Elsewhere she has become a symbol of oppression, "the confiscation of one individual's life by another" (p. 218, quoting Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran).

Vickers shows that Lolita had predecessors, real life ones as well as literary and cinematic, Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee, Lewis Carroll's Alice Liddell, D. W. Griffith's Dollie, Carroll Baker as "Baby Doll," Gigi, etc.And of course Lolita has had successors, many of them.Vickers recalls the real life cases of Elizabeth Smart, Sally Horner, Jon Benet Ramsey, Amy Fisher, and others.He recalls Brook Shields in Louis Malle's Pretty Baby (1978), but missed Melissa Joan Hart in TV's "Clarissa Explains It All."Miss Hart was in the casting call for Adrian Lyne's Lolita from 1997, but by then was a bit too old for the part.There have also been some literary take-offs on Lolita.Vickers gives us a little of Pia Pera's "Lo's Diary," and Emily Prager's "Roger Fishbite."He takes note of the Barbie Doll phenomenon and pornography on the Internet.In short, Lolita or various approximations or misapprehensions of her have become a staple of the popular culture.

A portion of the book is devoted to what amounts to reviews of the two films mentioned above that were adapted from Nabokov's novel.Vickers didn't care much for Kubrick's version, faulting it for lack of authentic atmosphere and for being ten years out of chronological reality.Both of those criticisms I think are valid.However, his faulting of the work of Shelly Winters as Charlotte Haze mystifies me since I think Winters was absolutely brilliant.He also didn't care for all the latitude that he believes Kubrick gave Peter Sellers, and again I tend to agree.However Sellers was brilliant in parts, so much so that his character materially changed the movie.Which leads us to the main criticism of Kubrick's film: it wasn't as true to the book as it could have been.Once again I agree, but overall Kubrick's film was deeply true to Nabokov's black comedic intent in a way that Lyne's film was not.

To be fair, Kubrick's Lolita was an excellent movie, but not the Lolita that Nabokov wrote.It couldn't have been for many reasons, not the least of which is that the Eisenhower America to which it was to be shown, wouldn't tolerate a real Lolita.It was, as Nabokov put it, a "vivacious variant" of his book. (p. 120).

Vickers very much liked Lyne's version.He raves about Dominique Swain's performance as Lolita and extends kudos to Lyne for the more realistic atmosphere.Lyne's film was indeed much more atmospheric employing a myriad of details from the late 1940s road culture as well as authentic music.However, Dominique Swain, was not a nymphet.She was a fully grown teenager, a talented and interesting teenager, but hardly what Humbert had in mind.To try to hid this obvious fact, Swain was dressed in somewhat laughable little girl outfits and swaddling bras.Sue Lyon, also a teenager, was, because of her more delicate figure, closer to Humbert's ideal.

One of Vickers' most penetrating insights is to see the Lolita of 1947 as a precursor of today's teen and preteen consumer.He writes: "America's golden period of consumerism might still be two or three years in the future, but even during the relative austerity of the late 1940s, the constant allure of consumer goods and services is already a potent force in Lolita's young life." (p. 146)Two pages later, Vickers refers to Lolita as "that ideal consumer" who would "become an enduring object of interest to the commercial world."

To this we could add that while teenage and preteen girls have been oh so carefully taught by corporate America through the mass media to consume, they themselves have become articles of consumption.The very interesting thing is they know it.In reference to Prager's role reversal novel, "Roger Fishbite," Vickers notes that it seems that "some dolled-up little girls at a beauty pageant...know all about JonBenet Ramsey and are generally philosophic about the tiresome attentions of men: 'They can't help it,' said Mary Jane.'We look so beautiful, like little candy women or something.'" (pp. 214-215) ... Read more

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"In an era of inept and ignorant imitations, whose piped-in background music has hypnotized innocent readers into fearing literality's salutary jolt, some reviewers were upset by the humble fidelity of my version. . . ." Such was Vladimir Nabokov's response to the storm of controversy aroused by the first edition of his literal translation of Eugene Onegin. This bold rendering of the Russian masterpiece, together with Nabokov's detailed and witty commentary, is itself a work of enduring literary interest, and reflects a lifelong admiration for Pushkin on the part of one of this century's most brilliant stylists. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Analyse That.
Nabokov's translation seems to arouse some heat.

If you're trying, as I did, to pick a translation to read, try sampling.

Here, for example is a stanza from Nabokov, not untypical in mood.It describes our hero's attitude to affairs of the heart at a certain stage in his life.

With belles no longer did he fall in love,
but dangled after them just anyhow;
when they refused, he solaced in a twinkle;
when they betrayed, was glad to rest.
He would seek them without intoxication,
while he left them without regret,
hardly remembering their love and spite.
Exactly thus does an indifferent guest
drive up for evening whist;
sits down;then, once the game is over,
he drives off from the place,
at home falls peacefully asleep,
and in the morning does not know himself
where he will drive to in the evening.

An intriguing blend of poetry and fiction
I adore Pushkin's poetry and have admired it since my college days long ago. He has a tenderness, elegance of metaphor, eye for beauty and connection to the Russian landscape, which truly set him apart. I consider him the Wordsworth of Russia, although Pushkin admired Byron, whom he quotes in Chapter 8. Eugene Onegin had much in common with Childe Harold. That is, Onegin is a man who is overwhelmed by the simple beauty of the Russian countryside in which Pushkin loved to dwell. Yet somehow he is a misfit and outcast within a rather anti-heroic context or, as Lermontov called it, as an unwilling driver of "the axe of fate." Onegin definitely has a deeply romantic aspect to his soul, as did Pushkin. In the dual with Lenski we see Pushkin foreshadowing his own demise in much the same way that Pechorin's experience in a Hero of Our Time was prescient of the demise of Lermontov. I am intrigued by Pushkin's attempt to structure his novel with the framework of poetry. The net effect is a mini-epic or short lyrical poem, which brings to mind the style of verse of, say, Virgil or Homer but with a more contemporary structure. I bought this translation by Nabokov who is as full of himself as ever in this rendition in which he seeks to translate with a vernacular style of which I would find it hard to believe that Pushkin would approve. It's hard to imagine that Pushkin would have described the friendship of Onegin and Lenski as "pals." Nabokov becomes an intrusive figure in this rendition instead of a silent, creative partner quietly and humbly adding value to the work. In the translation we depend upon the creative gifts of the translator and my experience with Pushkin in the past leads me to wonder if Nabokov does justice to Pushkin in this version of Eugene Onegin. If so, then clearly Pushkin is a far better poet than he is a novelist. However, Pushkin does bring to the novel elegant descriptive beauty and romantic sensibility, which inform Eugene Onegin. For my money, Lermontov's Hero of Our Time is a vastly superior novel to Eugene Onegin. If you want to read a truly great Russian novel, try Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgenev or Bulghakov. If you want the finest poetry ever written by a Russian, then read Pushkin's poetry. If you seek to gain insight into the fusion of poetry and fiction into a single genre, then you may be intrigued, as I was, by Eugene Onegin.

Of recipes and desserts
I completely agree with D.S. Heersink's assessment of Nabokov's Onegin translation. While undoubtedly accurate to the nth degree, it is tedious to read, to say the least. If you are studying Russian, perhaps the Nabokov translation might be appropriate; however, if you expect to derive pleasure from reading Eugene Onegin, by all means go with Falen.

Someone else commented on the fact that poetry cannot be translated. That is pure nonsense, though reading Nabokov's English version of Eugene Onegin, one would indeed come to the conclusion that a translation of the work from the Russian is impossible. To quickly correct that erroneous impression, pick up the James Falen translation.

Those interested in translation issues of all kinds should not miss Douglas Hofstadter's "Le ton beau de Marot" (which, incidentally, has much to say about Nabokov in general and his Eugene Onegin in particular). Come to think of it, you might want to read Hofstadter's own translation of Eugene Onegin. It's a little more playful and jazzy than Falen's. Which of the two is better is a matter of personal preference.

Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to read it without rhyme or meter. A student of Russian might glean some insight from Nabokov's literal translation, but lovers of poetry and beauty in language will not get much from it.

It really depends on what you are after. Nabokov gives you a detailed recipe, Falen a delicious dessert. If you want to know what it FEELS like to read Pushkin yourself, pick up a copy of Falen's (or Hofstadter's) translation. If you want to ANALYZE in painstaking detail what exactly every word means, go with Nabokov, but in that case be aware that you won't be reading verse. You'll know exactly what's in it, but it won't "taste" good.

From Russia with tough love
There is an old, politically-incorrect adage regarding the translation of a literary work from one language to another. A translation is like a woman: if it's beautiful, it's not faithul; if it's faithful, it's not beautiful. This saw kept buzzing through my brain while I was reading Vladimir Nabokov's 1964 English translation of Alexander Pushkin's novel-in-verse "Eugene Onegin". The poem has a unique place in Russian literature, required reading in schools -- required memorization, from what I understand. It seems an odd choice for school rooms, being an ironic love story with a sardonic edge; but then American students are required to read "Silas Marner", George Eliot's tale of greed and redemption. Nabokov, the author of the dazzling "Pale Fire", was born in Old Russia in 1899 and became a master of his native language as well as English. His version of Pushkin's masterpiece doesn't attempt to maintain the meter or rhyming scheme of the original, thereby leading to the danger of "piped-in background music", but presents a literal translation of "humble fidelity". There have been several English translations, and Nabokov sternly appraises them all. (Tchaikovsky's opera is dismissed as "slapdash".) He even goes so far as to compare his work with that of other translators. Thus, Onegin's flirtation with a serf in Book Four is translated by Nabokov as: "sometimes a white-skinned, dark-eyed girl's young and fresh kiss". In his notes Nabokov is amused by an earlier translator's "And, if a black-eyed girl permitted, sometimes a kiss as fresh as she" and is positively aghast at this rendering: "A kiss at times from some fair maiden, dark-eyed, with bright and youthful looks". Now, to an English-only reader, these don't really sound that ridiculous; but Nabokov, in his bilingual security, can be a caustic critic. (As evidently are some of his admirers: I've noticed in Amazon.com that "Eugene Onegin" causes some emotional responses.) By the way, the notes alone are worth the price of admission. Ferociously erudite, Nabokov can also be extremely witty, as when he is discussing Byronic heroes: "Judged by a number of early-nineteenth-century English and French novels that I have perused, the four main outlets or cures for ennui found by the characters suffering from it were: (1) making a nuisance of oneself; (2) committing suicide; (3) joining some well-organized religious group; and (4) quietly submitting to the situation." So, you've been alerted. Get out your dictionary (you'll need it), dust off your French (there's lots of it), and settle down to what might be called Nabokov's labor of tough love.

A weird translation that works
At the end of his writing career, Vladimir Nabokov predicted he'd be remembered for two things: Lolita and his translation of Alexander Pushkin's Russian classic Eugene Onegin. Both got off to bumpy starts with critics. Edmund Wilson--or "Bunny" as he was referred preciously by friends, including Nabokov--was ferocious with the translation. He judged it not merely bad but unreadable.

Nabokov ignored all criticism of his novels--which he considered "my circles, my special islands, infinitely safe from exasperated readers"--but he did explain his idiosyncratic translating methods.

Nabokov accurately--though rather needlessly--pointed out that translation is imperfect. He took exception, without exception, to the existing translations of Eugene Onegin, and, further, he formulated it was "mathematically impossible" for a translator to tackle the often conflicting responsibilities of reproducing a poem's meaning and verse form (which, up to his day at least, typically included a rhyme scheme and a metrical arrangement). To make his own equation simpler, he scrapped the sound effects for the sake of literal meaning: he sacrificed Pushkin's music for certainty. His English equivalents to Russian words, the connectivity of which he pondered and sought rather manically, totally ruined the poetics, and sometimes even the grammar, of the lines. "In an era of inept and ignorant imitations, whose piped-in background music has hypnotized innocent readers into fearing literality's salutary jolt," Nabokov wrote, the background music referring to a translator's inventions that fill-out a line or make a rhyme, "some reviewers were upset by the humble fidelity of my version."

Robert Frost quipped that poetry is exactly the stuff that doesn't come across in translation. Nevertheless, you ought to first decide what you value in poetry before selecting a translation of Eugene Onegin. If you believe a poem's meaning is the most important thing, go with Nabokov. If you cherish musicality, I recommend James E. Fallen. Being a contemporary, conscientious writer, Falen's work benefits from the range of previous translations--especially Nabokov's. He strives to retain Pushkin's poetic stuff--the rhyme scheme, the metrics--and, indeed, his translation is a pleasure, especially to recite. Nabokov would argue you'd be reciting Fallen, though, and not Pushkin. But Nabokov's rendering, for all its fidelity, still makes an illegitimate sound.

Readers of translations are always stuck in the position of having to trust in the methods and reputations of translators. If you're familiar with Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature" you know how intelligent a reader he was. Most comforting of all, Nabokov spent more time formally researching and translating Eugene Onegin than writing any three of his fictions combined. His commentary to the poem--sold in a separate edition--is massive, witty and laughably too informative for the common reader. Where his translation is methodically short on poetry, his commentary picks up the slack; if his translation's a sin against poetics, the commentary's penance. If you venture to read it, you'll know what Pushkin was up to, at all times.

Personally, I'm uncertain what approach to translation is most proper. I do find Nabokov's efforts noble: to think of the Eugene Onegin he alone, it seemed, was qualified and capable of making had he allowed himself free reign with his translating methods! Misguided or not, the twentieth century's most elegant prose stylist put his ego aside and, out of a loving admiration for a poet, pieced together a hard-won but really ugly translation of a poem. I'm pleased to notice, though, that ugliness in art isn't a deal-breaker. So enjoy Nabokov's "humble pony" for its own artistic merit. It's curious, haggard, bare-bones.

Or you can simply deny it's ugly. When your friends are over and gasp at the lines they sample, say "it's only fastidious" and be done with it. ... Read more