Word: vera
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...entertained sparingly and cared only to see a few close friends. They were too busy. Besides, science (lepidopterology) was once again coming to the aid of Vladimir's art. Its handmaiden was technology in the form of a 1952 Buick, bought mainly to search for specimens in the West. Vera did the driving. Nabokov, with the security of a man who is good at nearly everything, easily concedes he cannot handle a car, adding generously, "There are some people who can refold maps, too, but I am not one of them." Every summer they coursed up and down Arizona, Utah...
...Humbert's sad obsession with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze went off in the U.S. of the late '50s like a shot in church. At first, U.S. publishers were afraid to touch it. Vera was afraid Nabokov might lose his job at Cornell if they did. When it finally came out, reviewers, not yet used to such material in "serious literature," flew into rages of indignation and feigned boredom. New York Times Critic Orville Prescott, in particular, earned a gargoyle's niche in literary history by exclaiming, "Dull, dull, dull." But Lolita in due course was recognized as the masterpiece...
Plumed Sunset. Sometimes his wife Vera awakes to furtive noises in the night. It is the mad mind at work shuffling the 3-by-5 cards on which Nabokov now does all his writing, and which he keeps under his pillow for nocturnal reference...
Nabokov finally takes hold and orders, mirabile dictu, a Swiss red. Vera accepts, graceful in this as in everything. With finely drawn, strong features, alabaster skin, brilliant white hair, exquisite hands, she is a natural beauty. Their dinner conversation thrives on little disagreements, contrapuntal, and often not really resolved. In one exchange, Vera begins by explaining the mating ritual of the crested grebe, a grubby little bird which frequents the lake. They never touch, she says, waggling a delicate finger, but wiggle one foot back and forth. "No, no, no, no, no," says Vladimir, who has let this...
...Vera has reduced the complexities of modern life to a shadow that occasionally crosses her husband's path. Yet her real role, one senses, is not in these labors, but as the only confidante of that "lucid, lonely mind." In the summer, they walk as much as 15 miles a day together. In the evening, they play out their Scrabble tournaments, often with a Russian set (he can run up a 500 score). The chess problems he eventually publishes are set first for her to solve. They like to read to each other. They reread War and Peace...