Word: nabokovs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Here Nabokov becomes more poet than stuntman; the elegy Pale Fire has a lean grace and clarity of emotion worthy of a writer who is ranked, as Shade is supposed to be, only a step behind Robert Frost...
...winning acknowledgment as the cleverest writer is a touchy business, a little like becoming Pope - one must not campaign for the election. Readers of Nabokov's new book, which is surely the most eccentric novel published in this decade, have considerable reason to feel that the author is campaigning. Pale Fire, like Lolita, is a monstrous, witty, intricately entertaining work whose verbal agility is often bewildering. But unlike the earlier book, Pale Fire does not really cohere as a satire; good as it is, the novel in the end seems to be mostly an exercise in agility - or perhaps...
Thurgus the Turgid. Nabokov, of course, does this sort of turn spectacularly well. Solemnly the lardwit betrays himself, reporting that Shade's friendship "was the more precious for its tenderness being intentionally concealed." But as the reader reads Kinbote's line-by-line commentary on the poem, he sees that the annotator is afflicted with something more than boobery. Sanely or not, Kinbote has it firmly in his head that he is the deposed king of "a distant northern land" called Zembla, and that he was known to his adoring subjects as Charles the Beloved, son of Alfin...
...more troubling question is this: What did Nabokov have in mind when he wrote the book? Everything in it-and particularly the wiry elegance of the poem itself -denies the possibility that it is merely aimless entertainment. And although parts of the book are wickedly satirical of pompous emigres and academic wooden-heads, there seems to be no main target for the satire...
...explanation may lie in Nabokov's hypersensitivity to what is written about him. He does not at all enjoy the spectacle of clumsy minds trying to sniff out the "true" Nabokov. In Switzerland, where he now lives with his wife in a hotel overlooking Lake Geneva, he is abnormally cautious in what he says to reporters. Lolita was praised or damned with energy and ignorance by almost everyone licensed to operate a typewriter...