Word: nabokovs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Vladimir Nabokov published Ada, his fifteenth novel. He was then 70. In his youth he had identified and attached his name to a new species of butterfly, created the first Russian crossword puzzle, and translated Alice in Wonderland into his native tongue. Later, in the thirties, under the pseudonym V.V. Sirin, he had written what many critics consider the finest Russian novel of the century, The Gift. In the fifties, with a book called Lolita, he had put the word "nymphet" into the dictionary. Ada's masterful complexity seemed a natural culmination to the long list of novels, stories, poems...
WRITING about the new doubts concerning the traditional American work ethic, Donald Morrison found last week, can be hard work. "For one thing," he says, "the elements in this essay are so compelling and interwoven that you can summarize them no more easily than a Nabokov novel. And journalists are so accustomed to burning the midnight bulb that you have to remind yourself repeatedly that things can be different in other lines of work...
...Kafka and Rilke are but a few. Despite the vagaries of the judging, the award remains by far the most coveted prize for writers, partly because it is a huge windfall ($98,100). There are always famous bridesmaids waiting for the big green bouquet. At present they include Vladimir Nabokov, the finest novelist alive; Norman Mailer, the most protean writer; and poets like W.H. Auden and Robert Lowell...
...fact if crafty old Nabokov had not written the first and best motel tour in Lolita, one might think that cityfolk like Mrs. Roiphe should stay off the road and leave the driving to the sons and daughters of the wide-open spaces. Long Division is a disappointing book by a talented writer. What it lacks is convincing physical settings or incidents to sustain the mournful interior monologues of the trapped and finally boring heroine. The author is energetic enough. She offers accounts of breakdowns and highway fatigue, as well as side trips to the Hershey chocolate factory, a Cherokee...
...seemed unlikely that anyone would try to outdo Nabokov at his own game, but Steven Millhauser, a Brown University graduate student, has given it a game try in a really promising short novel. His jokes are broader than Nabokov's and are not woven into the story with nearly the master's exquisite timing. But he is witty, and his conceit -making both the artist and his biographer small boys-is elastic enough to stretch the length of the book...