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...collection's stunning opener, The Wood-Sprite is a tale in whose mere three pages Nabokov concentrates the essence of heartache and playfulness that distinguishes the best of his work. A Russian writer who has fled the terrors of his revolutionary homeland imagines a visit from a forest elf ("hunched, gray, powdered with pollen") who explains why he too had to leave the new Soviet state: "Once, toward evening, I skipped out into a glade, and what do I see? People lying around, some on their backs, some on their bellies. Well, I think, I'll wake them...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: BOOKS: DIVINITY IN THE DETAILS | 10/30/1995 | See Source »

Although he belonged to a distinguished St. Petersburg family with medieval roots and country estates, Nabokov never sentimentalized the old regime. Not for him the romance of serf and turf. He was above all a cultural and intellectual aristocrat, part of the Russian liberal class whose hopes for democracy were crushed by triumphant Bolshevism. Scorn for tyrants is etched on many of the pre-World War II Berlin stories, as well as others written during the '40s and '50s after he immigrated to the U.S. And woe to the poseur whose influence is based solely on personality. From Spring...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: BOOKS: DIVINITY IN THE DETAILS | 10/30/1995 | See Source »

Until Lolita ("light of my life, fire of my loins") scorched the best-seller list in 1955, Nabokov was a popular instructor of literature at Cornell, a productive but obscure author of exotic fiction and chess problems, and an even lesser known authority on butterflies. His genius for transforming sensory impressions into language may always remain elusive, but his descriptive powers owe much to training in natural science...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: BOOKS: DIVINITY IN THE DETAILS | 10/30/1995 | See Source »

...Nabokov liked to shock as well as enchant. A biology professor who suspects his wife of adultery frightens her to death by putting a skeleton in her bed. There is a boyish cruelty similar to Alfred Hitchcock's in many of Nabokov's mock-gothic tales. He was an ardent hunter of clichas and kitsch, and a mischievous parodist of traditional literary forms. The familiar 1952 story Lance sends up science fiction whose "Star tsars, directors of Galactic Unions, are practically replicas of those peppy, red-haired executives in earthy earth jobs." The little-known 1924 tale The Dragon turns...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: BOOKS: DIVINITY IN THE DETAILS | 10/30/1995 | See Source »

...collection contains "much, much more," to echo the last words of Nabokov's novel Ada. There are madmen, romantics, nymphets and those enduring symbols of the 20th century, melancholy exiles whose portable lives are light on possessions but heavy with memories. That Nabokov gave wings to his own past is reaffirmed by the publication of this long-overdue volume, an authentic literary event and, even at $35, the reading bargain of the year...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: BOOKS: DIVINITY IN THE DETAILS | 10/30/1995 | See Source »

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