Assorted things I have written over the years associated with Russian-American author and master of modernism, Vladimir Nabokov.
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Some Eccentric Readings of Ada
“I loath Van Veen” Nabokov, Interview Time (1969), cited in Strong Opinions “I believe that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that, far from having been a frivolous firebird, I was a rigid moralist kicking sin, cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel — and assigning sovereign power to tenderness, talent, and pride”…
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Ada: Chapter impressions so far
So I’m 30 chapters through reading Nabokov’s Ada alongside Brian Boyd’s extensive annotations. It is quite heavy going, and I’m continuously grateful to BB for explaining all the numerous allusions, great and small, that otherwise would pass me by. I’ll have a fuller appraisal up soon – in particular comparing Ada to Glory, which has…
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Speak: Memory! What I remember before re-reading Ada
Ada is Vladimir Nabokov’s longest book, and the first of his late European period after he found fame with Lolita then devoted ten years to his controversial, literalist translation of Eugene Onegin. It shares many features and themes with his earlier work, but is also strikingly different: massive, heavy-going and sometimes impenetrable, it stands in…
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Brian Boyd, Lit Crit and Ada
This is a collation of my thoughts on the pre-eminent Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd’s approach to literary criticism, particularly with regard to Ada – likely Nabokov’s least appreciated work. I wrote this up as part of the discussion of Ada and Boyd in relation to Michael Wood on the ilxor forums, here. These discussions are…
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Ayn Rand – a good writer after all?
Long after the politics have passed, literary quality – or lack of it – remains. The following is a comment I put together on an episode of the Origin Story podcast produced by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. The episode covered Ayn Rand and her legacy – while the guys are very unsympathetic to her…
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Review: My Struggle #1
A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard (2009) I’ve been really blindsided by how strong a reaction I had to A Death in the Family. There’s a lot of fiction, Nabokov obviously, but also the Borges or Kafka or lots of other stuff, where I can just look at it and go “fair…
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November Nabokoviana
Find what the Sailor has Hidden Priscilla Meyer (1988), Major Literary Characters: Lolita ed Harold Bloom (1993), Lolita: A Janus Text Lance Olsen (1995). I like pretty much the whole Nabokov canon, underrated earlier Russian works included – but the run he had writing in English and the American years: Sebastian Knight, Lolita, Pale Fire,…
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Lectures on Russian Literature
By Vladimir Nabokov (1981) Lectures on Russian Literature by Nabokov is just a joy to read again and again. If you’re at all interested in 19th century Russian Literature this is a delight, and if you’re not, you might well be after reading his hilarious study of Gogol – a lunatic and a genius, in…
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Review: Forgetting Elena
By Edmund White (1973) I’ve just finished White’s first book, Forgetting Elena – this is the book that Nabokov called “remarkable”. It is something else. An apparent amnesiac, who doesn’t even know his own name, plays out several days on an idyllic island, attempting to piece together his identity in a sort of utopian society…