Word: nabokovs
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DESPAIR by Vladimir Nabokov. 222 pages. Putnam...
...novelist's past has surpassed his present; there is now more old Nabokov around than new. The new Nabokov is represented by the man who has written five novels in English, the old by the Russian émigré, who, cast into exile by the Revolution, wrote eight novels in his mother tongue. Six of these have so far been translated into English, putting the old Nabokov one up on the new. Despair, the sixth, has been published in English twice...
...WALTZ INVENTION by Vladimir Nabokov. 1 1 1 pages. Phaedra...
...Life," says one of Vladimir Nabokov's characters, "makes a constant attempt to prove it is real." Russian-born Author Nabokov prefers to believe it is not. For him, real life ended with a bang in the 1917 Revolution. Ever since then he has quietly taken refuge in an elegant, ironic domain of private jokes and personal fantasies. Lolita made him famous because the private joke was also a public one that millions found appalling or appealing. His other works (The Eye, Pale Fire, Pnin, etc.) have been more complex fantasies. One of them is this prophetic, satirical play...
Fops & Frauds. At first glance, the play seems all aglitter with drolly prophetic lights. Gaudy gadgets have indeed become household fixtures, and man seems forever on the verge of blowing the top off his accustomed world. But Nabokov has not simply satirized the pursuit of absolute pleasure and absolute power. His text is fretted with his customary puns, double-entendres, and literary allusions. More important, in the play's final scene Nabokov reveals that Waltz's demonic invention, and his successful rise to power, and-for all the reader knows-most of the fools, fops, frauds, pacifists, pederasts...