Word: nabokovs
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...great attractions of theater for so many of its practitioners and adherents, of course, is exactly this idea of play and all its connotations of imagination, escape, and freedom. Its an appealing idea. Indeed, those writers that we might call aestheticists, from Alexander Pope all the way through Vladimir Nabokov, elevate the idea of play to one of the highest expressions of our humanity. Play, in the aestheticist's mind, becomes a representation of human independence precisely because it is not work; it is not essential. Unlike most animals, humans can choose to play instead of work; they can choose...
...story, his "rise" to being a successful execution technologist and his "fall" to being discredited, poor, and alone, the force at work the surface is thematic examination of the man's character, and what that character represents in a broader context. "I think the central idea is influenced by Nabokov, who probably more than anyone else conceived this idea of the self-deceived, clueless narrator. Think of Pale Fire and Lolita. These are narrators who have no idea whatsoever of what's going on. Fred is certainly an example of that kind of clueless narrator...
...portraying the events of a single day, June 16, 1904, in Dublin, it has comic exuberance, encyclopedic inclusiveness and a virtuoso display of diverse narrative styles that make most subsequent novels look like spin-offs. RUNNERS-UP One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov...
...understanding and faith in those qualities as well. The heroes not only defeated Hitler; they provided our lasting inspiration as well. "Just as Hitler made us believe we hadn't yet sounded the depths," notes Rosenbaum, "maybe Martin Luther King Jr. and the great artists of the century, like Nabokov, help us believe there are still heights we haven't found...
...guide for this trip (and I do mean trip) through history and literature is the eminent 19th-century translator of Russian literature Constance Garnett, whose unrelenting Englishness (read: priggishness) has been a scourge to modern translators from Nabokov on. Fashioned by Durang as a kind of Charles Kinbote for the entire Western cannon, Garnett is as much a mangler of Russian literature as a scholar of it. (The Russian word for frustrated homosexual is Peter Tchaikovsky, she says). Played with unrelenting and downright hysterical formality by Thomas Derrah, Garnett becomes as loveable as she is overbearing. Listening to her roll...