Word: nabokov
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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First he found his name listed on the program of a forthcoming Edinburgh writers' conference, then he got a letter saying that he was expected to appear. From his retreat at Montreux on the shores of Lake Geneva, Novelist Vladimir Nabokov, 63, sent his answer in the form of a letter to the London Times. "In the same list," said the strongly antileftist Russian émigré who left his homeland in 1919, "I find several writers whom I respect but also some others-such as Ilya Ehrenburg, Bertrand Russell and J.P. Sartre-with whom I would not consent...
...Here Nabokov becomes more poet than stuntman; the elegy Pale Fire has a lean grace and clarity of emotion worthy of a writer who is ranked, as Shade is supposed to be, only a step behind Robert Frost...
...more troubling question is this: What did Nabokov have in mind when he wrote the book? Everything in it-and particularly the wiry elegance of the poem itself -denies the possibility that it is merely aimless entertainment. And although parts of the book are wickedly satirical of pompous emigres and academic wooden-heads, there seems to be no main target for the satire...
...explanation may lie in Nabokov's hypersensitivity to what is written about him. He does not at all enjoy the spectacle of clumsy minds trying to sniff out the "true" Nabokov. In Switzerland, where he now lives with his wife in a hotel overlooking Lake Geneva, he is abnormally cautious in what he says to reporters. Lolita was praised or damned with energy and ignorance by almost everyone licensed to operate a typewriter...
Supporting this theory are the wealth of allusions that lead nowhere and the names that become meaningless anagrams ("Onhava," the capital of Zembla, becomes Navaho; ex-Zemblan can lead to dis-Zemblan, dissembler, resembler). Nabokov himself insists that "no book should ever have a deliberate message. It should be a combination of harmony and pleasure." If it is a key to a door, "the most important thing is for the key to work; it is quite unimportant what lies behind the door." Whatever meaning or non-meaning lies behind the door, any reader can delight in watching the greatest verbal...