Word: nabokov
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...NABOKOV: HIS LIFE IN ART, by Andrew Field. A 29-year-old American critic, Field thinks that Nabokov would be more easily understood if U.S. readers knew his Russian work as well as his English. So he analyzes all of Nabokov and makes a persuasive case that he is the best novelist now writing...
...NABOKOV: HIS LIFE IN ART, by Andrew Field. The 29-year-old American critic thinks that Nabokov would be more easily understood if U.S. readers knew his Russian work as well as his English. So he analyzes all of Nabokov and makes a persuasive case that he is the best novelist now writing...
Dappled Nouns. If art is Nabokov's muse, words are his mania: puns, anagrams (he has pointed out with glee that T. S. Eliot is almost "toilets" spelled backward), "word golf" (get from "live" to "dead" in five steps*), bilingual and trilingual double-entendres. More seriously, words of any language are vital possessions...
...poem, written in 1945, is a metaphor of Nabokov's career. It evokes the lost kingdom from which he was banished, the beloved words that can restore it, the mysterious agent of imagination that holds up the new material of life to the looking glass...
...first book, Andrew Field, 29, is himself a talented secret agent, tracking patiently through Nabokov's dreams and disguises, his ruses and games. His knowledge of Nabokoviana is awesome. Unfortunately, he is so awed by the master that he plays down his flaws and goes to ingenious extremes to explain away Nabokov's limited emotional resources or the coldness that occasionally turns high comedy into desolating farce. More important, he seems to lack breadth: it would have been good for the reader to find some comparison of Nabokov with such a contemporary as Isaac Babel, another great Russian...