Word: nabokovs
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Died. Vladimir Nabokov, 78, Russian-born novelist (Lolita, Ada, Pale Fire) who was a master of style and elegant artifice; after a long illness; in Montreux, Switzerland (see BOOKS...
...Vladimir Nabokov was, in his own words, "an American writer born in Russia and educated in England, where I studied French literature before spending 15 years in Germany." His life was, in fact, a spiral of migrations, and his passport was his art. When he died last week at 78, of a viral infection, at a hospital near his home in Montreux, Switzerland, that art was widely considered to include some of the best novels of the 20th century. There are three masterpieces: The Gift, written in Russian and first published in 1936, Lolita (1955), and Pale Fire...
...Montreux Palace hotel, where he and his wife Vera occupied apartments for the past 18 years, Nabokov wrote, composed chess problems and pondered the secrets of entomology -often while seated on garden benches. Out of his deep knowledge of language and literature, he designed a fictive looking-glass world whose seriousness was lightened by ingenious wordplay and metaphors. He was a sturdy, athletic figure who in summer could be seen chasing butterflies in Alpine meadows...
...narrow specializations, Nabokov's genius was being able to see that "there is no science without fancy, and no art without facts." To his naturalist's eye, the world contained a profusion of odd juxtapositions, camouflages and artifices that concealed enchanting truths. A journalist who asked why the genitalia of male butterflies were hooked and serrated like instruments of torture received the following two-word answer: "High winds...
...book contains - to use the last words of Ada - "much, much more." Whether by scheme or coincidence, that novel flew like Zeno's paradoxical arrow. Part 1 took up half the book. Part 2 was half of one remaining half, etc., ad infinitum. Perhaps this was Nabokov's metaphor for the inexhaustible magic of memory. Field, too, stoically accepts the fact that he can never quite reach his target. Yet he still manages to track the flight of genius...