Word: nabokovian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...eleven years, and his output, aside from a few little stories, was a "novel" called Cartoons, inspired by innumerable comic books and animated movie features. Though mildly precocious, Edwin is in fact a rather ordinary little fellow. The one to watch is Jeffrey Cartwright, a rare demon in the Nabokovian mold. With his "extraordinary, truly inspired memory," Jeffrey recalls his first meeting with Edwin, which occurred when the former was six months old and the latter but a few days. From that moment, Jeffrey preys upon the unfortunate Edwin, and after his untimely death launches into his "biography" with...
...after a man is a hard, worrisome thing," she says, after opening Long Boy's eyes to a floozy's designs on his money. Most of the time on their travels, she and Long Boy share a room, but their relationship is almost puritanically free of any Nabokovian decadence. Addie's speech, however, is vulgar, pungent country talk, which adds greatly to the book's easygoing charm. Looking at Long Boy with his floozy, she observes that "he got that silly, dazed grin like a torn cat being choked to death with cream." Like that extravagant...
Updike has ingeniously and elaborately invented Bech and his entire literary career. Verisimilitude is heightened by various Nabokovian cartouches, including an appendix containing Henry Bech's "Russian journal" and an introductory letter to Updike from Bech that shrewdly stops short of being a seal of approval: "I don't suppose your publishing this little jeu of a book will do either of us drastic harm...
...McCarthy seems to have abandoned his political base in Minnesota, where his once formidable organization is a shambles. He has resigned his powerful seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and taken to writing a monthly column for McCall's. In short, with the arrogant melancholy of a Nabokovian conjurer, McCarthy performed his trick, then packed his belongings and disappeared...
...hunt for clues to his own early background, and the attempt to dekidnap himself and all his friends who have been stolen away from their childhood into an adopted adulthood. The excellent but dumfoundingly prolix result is an often funny, painfully intense psychological detective story filled with Double-Crostics, Nabokovian word games and revelations that tantalizingly obscure as much as they reveal...