Word: english
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Nabokov's latest novel, is already a bestseller. Nabokov's peculiar fascination ?and enduring power?escapes conventional measurement, but by any standard, the range and volume of his work in two languages is prodigious. It includes 15 novels (nine Russian, six English) and translations of other writers' work. His fiction differs from most novels in much the same way that a poem differs from a political treatise. One is an end in itself. The other, however intricate and elegant, is a means to an end. In a classic sneer...
...radiant smile of perfect satisfaction, a purr of beatitude?and a writer may well be proud of himself if he can make his readers, or more exactly some of his readers, smile and purr that way." When as a young man in Berlin, Nabokov decided to translate an English masterpiece into Russian, the book he chose was Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps he knew, even then, that the best way for an artist to triumph over time was to vanish like the Cheshire cat, leaving only a smile behind...
...series of nannies and governesses assisted his mother in teaching Vladimir to speak and read English (before he could read Russian). Tutors and coaches turned Nabokov into a competent boxer and a skilled tennis player?good enough, in fact, so that later, in straitened exile, he helped pay his way by giving lessons. More or less on his own he became an expert at chess problems and a collector of butterflies...
...expressly chosen by his father, he resented a master's suggestion that the Nabokov coachman deposit him several blocks away so he could arrive at class democratically afoot. A more galling comment, though, came from teachers who accused him of "showing off?mainly for "peppering my Russian papers with English and French terms which came naturally...
...apart from fellow white Russians, he was virtually unknown. Nearing 40, he had yet to write anything in English...