Word: nabokovian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2010-2019
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...structural level is just where his language begins to break down. The thrill of the Nabokovian sentence lies in its intense compression, that hyper-compacted poetry of the apposite adjective or unexpected metaphor that separates it from the more loosely polemical Russian literary tradition. It’s why Nabokov adored Tolstoy’s taut prose and thought Dostoevsky a hack. In “Laura” this compression unravels—degenerating near the end into mere personal notes (“invent tradename, e.g. cephalopium”) and haphazard lists (drawing linkages between self-dissolution...
...Switzerland. The literary world at once divided in two: the “publish” camp happy to get their hands on whatever they could from the man they considered a genius, and their “perish” antagonists urging incineration lest any imperfection blacken the Nabokovian halo. One might assume that the recent green light points to some newly unearthed document or deep philosophical revelation. Not so. In an absurd introduction seeking to defend the decision, Nabokov’s son Dmitri waxes at turns cloyingly idolizing, stridently resentful, and distastefully self-aggrandizing in his memories...