Word: nabokovs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. Vladimir Nabokov, 78, Russian-born novelist (Lolita, Ada, Pale Fire) who was a master of style and elegant artifice; after a long illness; in Montreux, Switzerland (see BOOKS...
...Vladimir Nabokov was, in his own words, "an American writer born in Russia and educated in England, where I studied French literature before spending 15 years in Germany." His life was, in fact, a spiral of migrations, and his passport was his art. When he died last week at 78, of a viral infection, at a hospital near his home in Montreux, Switzerland, that art was widely considered to include some of the best novels of the 20th century. There are three masterpieces: The Gift, written in Russian and first published in 1936, Lolita (1955), and Pale Fire...
...Montreux Palace hotel, where he and his wife Vera occupied apartments for the past 18 years, Nabokov wrote, composed chess problems and pondered the secrets of entomology -often while seated on garden benches. Out of his deep knowledge of language and literature, he designed a fictive looking-glass world whose seriousness was lightened by ingenious wordplay and metaphors. He was a sturdy, athletic figure who in summer could be seen chasing butterflies in Alpine meadows...
Field believes that the young relationship in the early '40s was uneasy because both writers were at awkward stages in their careers. Nabokov's European reputation had yet to transplant itself to America. Wilson the literary journalist was just becoming Wilson the critic and man of letters. Furthermore, says Field, Wilson often chose to play the brooding Russian, while Nabokov played the easygoing American. The following conversation is reported to have taken place in 1942 - Wilson: "Do you believe in God?" Nabokov: "Do you?" Wilson: "What a strange question!" According to Field, the friendship ended in 1954, when...
...book contains - to use the last words of Ada - "much, much more." Whether by scheme or coincidence, that novel flew like Zeno's paradoxical arrow. Part 1 took up half the book. Part 2 was half of one remaining half, etc., ad infinitum. Perhaps this was Nabokov's metaphor for the inexhaustible magic of memory. Field, too, stoically accepts the fact that he can never quite reach his target. Yet he still manages to track the flight of genius...