Word: nabokovs
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...GIFT (378 pp.)-Vladimir Nabokov-Putnam...
...Vladimir Nabokov has the gift of tongue-specifically Russian and English. Famed for his novels in his second tongue (notably Pale Fire and Lolita), Nabokov has now released the English translation (which is partly his own) of The Gift, which is the last novel he wrote-26 years ago-in his native Russian. Without being a great book, it is clearly a book by a great writer; each sentence delights the ear or some area of the mind...
...Nabokov's young hero is very like the young Nabokov. Count Fyodor Godu-nov-Cherdyntsev is in his early 20s, living in exile in Berlin, struggling not to be crippled by memories of the ancient family estate in Leshino, and trying to get his poetry and prose published in impoverished emigre magazines. His sister marries and leaves for Paris; he meets and falls in love with Zina, a remotely fragile German girl. All of this is simple, and corresponds roughly to the facts of Nabokov's own life...
...colleges in the country. From India to Peru, it counts 1,500 aid and research projects, including the world's largest radar (for ionosphere study), abuilding in Puerto Rico. Scholarly names dot the faculty of 1,650-Physicist Hans Bethe, Astronomer Thomas Gold, Critic Arthur Mizener, Novelist Vladimir Nabokov taught Russian literature in Ithaca while writing Lolita...
...fond of wedging hyphens between split hairs might call him a serio-comic or even a calamito-comic novelist). He is the author of The Manchurian Candidate, a comic eruption that simply as comedy ranks with the best funny novels done recently in the U.S.-that is, with Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Richard Bissell's 7½ Cents and Peter De Vries's Comfort Me with Apples. But Condon is something more. He is a comedian who throws his custard pies in black anger, with intent to maim. His novels resemble (more accurately, are resembled by) Heller...