Vladimir Nabokov Books

Once I had closely re-read the first 10-20 pages to better absorb the personal histories, which I found confusing at first read, I was well-fortified to enjoy the rest of the book. The writing is fabulous and I liked the mystery motif. There were very few slow spots and plenty of humor and seeming insight, yet the book had only a superficial effect on me. I left not really feeling I understood Sebastian or his half-brother (Knight's biographical researcher) very well at all -- and not particularly caring either, because it was so pleasant to read and I'm not sure that it was the author's intention to make us really care about the characters. While there is deep philosophy discussed, the book had a lightweight feel. Maybe that was the intent of the book -- to make the point that people (the half-brother biographer and the famous brother) are ultimately indescribable no matter how much you describe them and their acts. Or maybe it was just a display of great writing that was intended to transcend the content, a virtuoso display. In a certain way it reminded me of the previous book I read, This Side of Paradise by F.Scott Fitzgerald, in that each is the story about a purportedly brilliant young author (Fitzgerald himself, and the fictional Sebastian Knight). But Fitzgerald's book, while sophomoric and at times silly in the beginning, ultimately became quite serious and almost sublime -- plus we know what actually happened to talented Fitzgerald, adding another layer of poignancy. Nabokov's book also reminded me of some of the Nouveau Roman authors of the 1950's-1960's where all of the detail is just an intellectual game, not intended for serious reader involvement. Nevertheless, I will definitely read more of Nabokov. This was I believe his first book in English and I figured I would start there.

My English not being my mother language has attracted me to Nabokov. And I admire him enourmously.But this novel was almost a disappointment, because, though it is so good at times, the almost plotless tale reaches a climax of the futile and bore when (we are already somewhere in the middle of the book)he narrator, who is by then in search of a lady, indulges in a series of inane dialogues whose aim eluded me. And the eighteenth chapter is wonderful, though I disliked also the final chapters, this simulacrum of impetus and parody of revelation on the very point of dying.

Nabokov intension, until he discovered for himself the wonderful world of pop-culture (cf. Lolita and Ada), was really to describe truth and beauty (see 'Luzhin's defense', 'Gift' etc.) in the tradition of the Old World, and play less with cheep riddles and collective phobias. His dealing with the issue of death, as in 'Ultima Thule' etc., appears also here; the last book written by Knight is, however, written about in a pale and uninspiring way (Nabokov could not make his vision clear?), and, surprisingly for Nabokov, is not free of commonplaces and dejavous. All in all the book is original and interesting, as nearly everything Nabokov wrote. And, by the way, the treatment of the relation narrator-genius (commonplace in itself, unfortunately) looks better than in Mann's Doctor Faustus, where it is taken quite heavily (one does not see the traces of the hammer blows).

Side remark: the stars practice is really annoying: isn't there a way to write about books without grading them?

This exquisitely written novel fills one with despair. It is a sadness that was perhaps felt by many after such rare and creative geniuses as Mozart, Van Gogh, Shubert, and Gershwin all died too young after such short careers. Some of these men, like Sebastian Knight, died in relative obscurity. Sebastian's half-brother, the narrator of this novel, enters upon a journey to uncover the last months of Sebastian's life, to discover his secret, and perhaps to find out about the shadowy woman who was supposedly his last lover.

Sebastian's handful of books were admired by some of the critics, who found them scholarly and poetic, and his last novel was judged a masterpiece. Most of Sebastian's books were little read by a public who were probably more inclined to read the popular potboilers of the day. The half-brother, while loving and admiring Sebastian, barely knew him himself, only knowing that Sebastian lead a lonely, sad existence, and that he suffered from a congenital heart condition. What lends much of the novel its sadness is the palpable desperation of the narrator's quest. While his efforts in uncovering his brother's secret may have been less than successful, he did learn much about what Nabokov calls our common shared humanity with the souls of others. This is a beautifully written and heartfelt narrative that should be read by those who appreciate great literature.

Vladimir Nabokov is perhaps my very favorite author, and so I approached this work withthe mindset of "it must be at least good." It is. It contains the subtlety and puzzling qualities and droll humor of his great works and still manages to work in its own little bit of beauty. It also has its duller stretches, it lacks a real point, and it is more than vaguely pretentious, but nothing unforgivable. As his first full-length work in English, perhaps it should be treated more as an experiment in compositional workability than anything else.
The relative ease of reading this as compared to Nabokov's best, like 'Pale Fire' and 'Lolita,' may make it a good introduction to novices.

The title says it all. The last section of the book, some twenty pages consists of primarily lepidoptera papers which may or may not interest fiction devotees of N's fiction. His generous use of the epithet "philistine" may rouse some prejudice against N.'s apparently pharisaical and insolent notions on literature, psychology, politics and such, but he always is sure to qualify those strong opinions as solely his own; in large, he abstains from truth claims that would make his book little more than the exegesis of a Pharisee. Besides, one doesn't read a book of opinions for the author's Truth (with a "T!"), unless that is, you are a Kurt Vonnegut follower. Great insights, humor and opinions from a great author. Minus a star or two for a certain degree of repetitiveness.

Before I first encountered STRONG OPINIONS, I was a Nabokov fan. Reading this collection, however, changed my view of him for good. The man's weird animus against literally hundreds of major authors (Cervantes, Camus, Balzac, Mann, Stendhal, Lorca, Faulkner--you name 'em!) is terribly mean-spirited and small. His attacks on Freud get tiresome, and one begins to wonder if he ever did read much Freud in any depth. He also goes after other leading thinkers and even lets fly against, in his words, "Einstein's slick formulae" (I'm really quoting). And his defense of the U.S. war on Vietnam is incredibly ignorant and simplistic, even stupid. Nabokov the artist was a major presence who altered the shape of literature. Nabokov the man, by contrast, was a nasty, dogmatic, narrow-minded little fellow who couldn't countenance any aesthetic but his own.
I'm not the only Nabokovophile who has had this "conversion." I know several others who've had the same experience.

The book includes interviews, literary essays and five short articles on Lepidoptera. Since the book covers the main themes in Nabokov's life on one hand and is carefully compiled by Nabokov himself on the other, it presents a kind of self-portrait. Its author was a remarkably relentless rewriter, who noted that "[he] rewrote several times every word that [he] has ever published" and that even his recounting of the last night's dream to his wife was "but the first draft", and so this book is the result of no less a meticulous labor than his novels are. It presents a carefully drafted portrait, at times blatantly revealing, at times guardedly mystifying, but always elegantly or freshly phrased.

In his "Lectures on Literature", Nabokov mentions a character in "Bleak House", a man appearing only for a sentence or two just to help carry in from the street an old man in his chair. He gets a tuppence for his labors, tosses it in the air, catches it over-handed, and leaves. Nabokov points out that this one word, "over-handed", makes all the difference: it is a drop of color which renders even an incidental character alive. It seems that Nabokov's own public persona is similarly brought to life with the stories of borrowing a television set (which otherwise he did not watch) to see the first man landing on the Moon, or of having driven a car twice in his life (both times disastrously).

Some of the essays presented in the book are real gems. The 4-page piece "On Adaptation" is a beautiful critique of Robert Lowell's unfortunate rendition in English of Mandelshtam's famous poem. The highly amusing penultimate sentence, where Nabokov applies to one of Lowell's poems the techniques Lowell used in his version of Mandelshtam's, makes the most expressive argument for literal translation and for preserving the writer's intent. In a way, this one sentence makes a better case for Nabokov's verbatim translation of "Eugene Onegin" than the much longer if very engaging article answering Wilson's critique of Nabokov's translation of Pushkin's masterpiece.

Another essay, "Inspiration", provides a rare glimpse into the writer's sanctum sanctorum: a detailed description of a writer's interaction with his muse. Nabokov presents here several examples of what he considers inspired writing and expresses hope that students will learn to recognize it in the books they read. The students of Nabokov will certainly recognize inspiration in his own writing, revealing itself in elegant phrasing and fierce independence of thought and making his answers even to the most mundane questions worth reading.

This is a pretty good collection of Interviews with Nabokov and Nabokov's letters to editors and stuff like that. For people who want to find out more there's the comprehensive two volume biography of Nabokov by Brian Boyd.

Nabokov's opinions in a nutshell?

Thought everything written by James Joyce was completely mediocre except for "Ulysses," which towered above the rest of his ouvre as one of the supreme literary masterpieces of the 20th century. Loved Flaubert and Proust and Chateaubriand, did not like Stendhal (simple and full of cliches) or Balzac (full of absurdities). Loved Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" (considered it the greatest novel of the 19th century) and "Death of Ivan Illych," hated "Resurrection" and "Kreutzer sonata." Liked Gogol, despised Dostoevsky as a melodramatic mystic (he even once gave a student an F in his course for disagreeing with him). Loathed Conrad and Hemingway, but liked the description of the fish in "Old Man and the Sea" and the short story "Killers." Hated Andre Gide, T.S.Eliot, Faulkner, Thomas Mann and D.H.Lawrence and considered them all frauds. Thought Kafka was great, Orwell mediocre. Despised Camus and Sartre, considered Celine a second rater, but liked H.G.Wells. Loved Kubrick's film of Lolita (thought it was absolutely first-rate in every way) but later in the '70s regretted that Sue Lyon (though instantly picked by Nabokov himself along with Kubrick out of a list of thousands) had been too old for the part & suggested that Catherine Demongeot, the boyish looking 11 year old who appeared in Louis Malle's 1960 film "Zazie dans le Metro" would've been just about perfect to induce the right amount of moral repulsion in the audience towards Humbert (and prevent them from enjoying the work on any superficial level other than the purely artistic). Liked avant-garde writers like Borges and Robbe-Grillet and even went out of his way to see Alain Resnais' film with Robbe-Grillet: "Last Year at Marienband." Didn't care for the films of von Sternberg or Fritz Lang, loved Laurel and Hardy. Made a point of saying how much he hated Lenin when it was fashionable to blame the disasters of the Soviet Union on Stalin. Supported the War in Vietnam and sent President Johnson a note saying he appreciated the good job he was doing bombing Vietnam. Never drove an automobile in his life & his wife was the one who drove him through the United States on scientific butterfly-hunting expeditions, all through the many locales & motels & lodges that later appeared in "Lolita."

Seem interesting? You're bound to be offended even if Nabokov is one of your favorite writers. Genius or madman? I would say both, the 'divine madness' of the greatest of artists. Highly recommended for a peek inside the artistically fertile mind, and the tensions that need to be maintained to produce it.

This collection of interviews and articles is essential reading for lovers of Nabokov's fiction. Throughout he presents himself as a full blown iconoclast, presenting in lucid prose (Nabokov never answered interview questions without having time to prepare beforehand), delicious vignettes into his character and theories of literature.

Here you will find, a staunch defence of why he translated Pushkin literally (and a funny damning of his erstwhile foil, Edmund Wilson's misplaced criticism; reflections on the course of his triptych life (Russia, Europe America); how his literary inspiration comes (the complete novel wells up inside him before it is written then curls itself out); a refusal to allow any social message to his work; the pleasures of writing (the tingle in the spine); his condemnation of a host of cannonical authors - Faulkner, Hemmingway, Conrad, Dostoevski etc.; and most importantly, the leitmoteif that runs through his thought, an extended diatribe against the vulgarities and pervasiveness of 'poshlost' (see p.100 in the paperback edition). If you absorb this defintition, and agree with its tenets, you will start to notice instances of poshlost spreading like a rash all over contemporary letters, films and journalism.

In addition there are a couple of beautifully written pieces on butterfly hunting, a perfect subject for Nabokov's perceptive, aesthetic mind, and a lifelong passion of his.

I bought and read Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature" which is based on his European literature course that he taught at Cornell in the 1950s. That is an excellent guide to seven well known novels: "Mansfield Park, Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Walk by Swann's Place, The Metamorphosis, and Ulysses." In that set of course notes he dissects each book and spends about 40 pages or so on each novel discussing style, structure, etc. He spends more time on Ulysses and less on Kafka's "The Metamorphosis."

The present book is a bit different. He prepared only six lectures that he gave in the spring of 1952 at Harvard for the course Humanities 2. The aim is to describe and give an overall context for the work "Don Quixote." The notes still exist in six manilla folders and they are the basis of the present book edited by Fredson Bowers.

The course starts with a very brief introduction in the same style as the Cornell lectures with sketches of maps, etc. Next, he describes in detail the character of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Those are the first two chapters, or about 24 pages. Then he describes the structure of the book for another 25 pages, again with copies of Nabokov's actual class notes.

Cruelty and mystification are covered in a similar but lengthy analysis, followed by The Chronicler's Theme, and Victory and Defeats. The second half of the book is a chapter by chapter summary of both volumes I and II. In total, it is just over 200 pages of notes.

As Guy Davenport states in his introduction, the book puts most other teachers to shame who attempt to teach Don Quixote in a week. It is refreshing and detailed, and as Nabokov points out, this is an analysis of a book that evokes cruel laughter. It is not a "gentrified" story of an old book; and, according to Nabakov, such a past but popular interpretation was a misreading of the story. He compares this "crude old book" to the more sophisticated plays of Shakespeare, a contemporary of Cervantes. He spend almost no time on the life of Cervantes, and he thinks that the important focus should be the book itself not Cervantes biography - interesting as his life might have been. He recommends the Samuel Putnam translation or the 1950 Penguin version by J.M. Cohen. He recommends avoiding the Viking Press 1949 version.

This is a comprehensive and easy to read analysis of the first great European novel.

Nabokov claims to dislike Don Quixote and considers the novel 'crewl' yet spent a significant portion of time analyzing the novel and teaching it. I am reminded of Tolstoy's dismissal of Shakespeare and his dissection of King Lear. Orwell correctly pointed out that, among these giants, bothering to grapple with another's legend so completely is a nod to greatness, one doesn't bother to kill a knat w/ a sledgehammer.

Great analysis. One only wonders whether, at turns, the criticism should be leveled at the translation.

"... one of the most bitter and barbarous books ever penned" said Nabokov about "Don Quixote". Exposing the flood of physical and emotional abuse inflicted on the half insane knight and his largely average squire is at the heart of these lectures. In the early 50's, when Nabokov delivered his lectures on "Don Quixote" at Harvard, this was a radically new take on the classic novel which most critics considered good-natured and almost pastoral. For Nabokov, however, this position was quite in line with his signature irreverent views. He has always been sensitive to human suffering and considered pity for human condition one of the main attributes of art (in his "Lectures on Literature", for example, he especially noted compassion for the lame girl in "Ulysses" and Gregor's quiet suffering as a beetle in "Metamorphosis").

Building up on the themes of cruelty and insanity, Nabokov points out that in 1600's both were enjoyed as entertainment. The raw cruelty of 3,000 lashes that Sancho is to receive, or Don Quixote's suspension by the hand for two hours during which he "bellows like a bull", or the sick pleasure that many of the book's characters derive from Don Quixote's insanity and from playing into it - all that was run of the mill fun in Cervantes's Europe. Nabokov believes that this crude entertainment was the main source of the book's appeal for the readers when the book came out.

The novel's structure (which in Nabokov's world is second only to style) is really nonexistent: "The book belongs essentially to a primitive form, to the loosely strung, higgledy-pickled, variegated picaresque type". Nabokov notes that the many inconsistencies in the book Cervantes seems to either ignore or simply attribute to magic.

The novel's cruelty, its appeal to the "primitive reader" as a source of crude entertainment and its messy structure are described in convincing detail. By comparison, Nabokov's occasional appeal to Cervantes's genius is not developed into a stronger argument. Nabokov does note the dramatic dialogue which is "marvelous [...] even in translation", artistic and original depiction of Don Quixote and the equal number of the knight's losses and victories in each of the two parts of the book (Nabokov associates symmetry and balance with artistic genius). On balance, these lectures are much more about the novel's flaws.

If these lectures prompt one to pick up "Don Quixote", it would not be for the novel's artistic beauty that Nabokov highlighted: the first half of the book is mostly devoted to analyzing the novel's shortcomings and the second part to going over the synopsis of every chapter, with little commentary from Nabokov. These lectures are remarkable, however, for presenting a high standard of reading: for the attention to detail and for their inspiration to develop a literary opinion that you could truly claim your own.

O.K., once again this Russian runaway is subjecting his very own petty preferences on a piece and scope of Western Literature that (HE...Vladimir the Great) is not a part of. Sorry Nabby, but your prose style is too flabby and your envious lil' lectures are a lot too gabby. So who is Nabokov? Well he is a guy who's
book o' pedophilia was only put on the map because a director named Kubrick decided to thumb it's pages. You don't like Hemingway,Camus,Faulkner or Cervantes....alright Nabby, you don't have to like them, your dead and barely living through Lolita. These great authors and their great opuses are still greatly alive with them. Sorry Nabby, maybe in your next lifetime you will be apart of the club.

i like this book. it helps a lot. and looks good on the shelf to boot.

At the end of his writing career, Vladimir Nabokov predicted he'd be remembered for two things: Lolita and his translation of Alexander Pushkin's Russian classic Eugene Onegin. He was half right. When it was published almost a half century ago, Nabokov's literal translation was taken to task. Edmund Wilson (a friend of Nabokov's) drove the hardest, instigating a famous literary duel. Intellectuals fled the scene and from higher ground watched these two giants go at it.

Wilson maintained that Nabokov's translation was an unreadable mixture of obscure words and sloppy un-metrical adventurism that betrayed Pushkin's poetry, and he squabbled over Nabokov's Russian-to-English equivalents. For his part, Nabokov--usually one to ignore critical appraisals of his work, good or bad--defended his translation's difficulty by claiming that, percentage-wise, most of the words he used were easy to read. He added, more seriously, that a measure of obscurity was necessary. To the English reader, Pushkin would essentially be a new poet. And new poets, the good ones, remodel their language, they show original ways of looking at things, sometimes they present new thoughts. Why then should a translation of such a poet be entirely relaxed and familiar? So what if the reader has to open a dictionary? And Nabokov assured Wilson, who was then only learning to speak Russian, that his Russian-to-English equivalents were correct. (Nabokov, who prided himself on being able to pack everything he owned in a single afternoon, just in case he had to change countries, was trilingual from childhood, and he composed novels, poems and plays in both Russian and English.)

In Nabokov's opinion, Pushkin was Russia's Shakespeare, and Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's Hamlet. The English-speaking world simply had to be introduced to the poem, the right way. Since Nabokov hated all the existing English translations of Eugene Onegin, without exception, and he had himself translated pieces of it in his free time, his wife Vera suggested that he just go ahead and do the whole thing right and publish. But he was uneasy. Translating for sport was one thing, publishing another. To him, translating poetry meant perverting ingenuity. Pushkin's original Russian would be worn thin by the changing of hands, especially if the poem's rhyme scheme and meter were attempted. So he devised a compromise that he thought fair. He would create a translation that focused on the mot juste. He went for what can be called cognitive accuracy. That is to say, he scrapped the poem's rhymes, meter, and music for a mountainous and sometimes overbearing Webster's Dictionary. If his best English equivalents ruined the poetics, even the grammar of the line, so be it. There were worse offenses, in his opinion. He wouldn't tolerate the inventions of translators--a rhyme, a turn of phrase, any sentiment forced into the true poet's mouth. So Nabokov was left with what many will consider a raw and sometimes clumsy Eugene Onegin.

Robert Frost once quipped that poetry is exactly what does not come across in translation. That said, the translator of poetry, against all odds, has two general approaches. One, like Nabokov, find and use the most appropriate equivalents possible and in so doing, leave the poetry out; or two, create new poetry in the translation's language by using inexact equivalents to fit the rhyme and meter. It's up to you as a reader to decide what you're looking for. What do you consider the essence of poetry? Pick Nabokov for word equivalent accuracy--the best that's available, the best we're likely to get. Pick someone else for poetry. But, in a way, you can have both...

With that in mind, I suggest you read both Nabokov and James E. Falen's translations. Being a contemporary, conscientious writer, Falen's work benefits from the range of previous translations, especially Nabokov's. But Falen retains Pushkin's poetic stuff, the rhyme scheme, the metrics, and his translation is a pleasure, especially to recite. For extra fun, read Nabokov's awkward rendering aloud, right after. Shock your friends.

Still, if he lived to see it, Nabokov would have likely called Falen's translation "piped-in background music" like he did all the others. Would he be right? Well, Falen couldn't avoid betraying Pushkin's Russian; it would be, as Nabokov phrased it, mathematically impossible not to. And, to be sure, Falen's own quill is noticeable in places--his translation reads beautifully for a reason. However, it can and will be claimed that Nabokov does Pushkin just as big a disservice. After all, how can Nabokov harp on about inauthentic and "piped in" music, and how it stains Pushkin's reputation, when the music he pipes in under the name of Pushkin is so hard on the ear? Just because Nabokov ignores Pushkin's music, doesn't mean his translation makes no sound. Who, then, is right?

No matter how hard and ably they try, translators are always wrong. Two different languages are just too different. It is necessary, then, that English readers without Russian make a leap of faith. They're hands are tied, so they must ultimately place their trust in the translator's method. Or reputation. By reputation, of course, English readers--and Pushkin for that matter--can't improve upon the writer of Lolita. His writing expertise aside, if you've ever experienced Nabokov's Lectures on Literature, you know how painstaking and intelligent a reader he was. Most comforting of all, Nabokov spent more time researching and translating Eugene Onegin than writing any three of his fictions combined. And this research was added to an already lifelong love of Pushkin, whom he first translated as a boy (his aristocratic family kept a library). His commentary to the poem--sold in a separate edition--is witty, massive, and laughably too informative for the common reader. But at times it's also vividly written. Where the translation is purposefully short on poetry, the commentary picks up the slack. If you venture to read it all, you'll know what Pushkin was up to, at all times. It's Nabokov's penance, really, for making messes of the original Russian.

The whole of the work convinces me that Nabokov's translation methods are correct, or at least noble, if for no other reason than its baffling modesty. Ironically, the most elegant prose stylist of the Twentieth-Century sought to make his translation clunkier with every revision. But as ugly as it is, it's possible, with time and patience, or a perverse sensibility, to actually enjoy Nabokov's "humble pony" on its own artistic merit. It owns a certain haggard beauty, a kind of bare-bones poetry. Besides, in an age when a word-spiral on a page or a flipbook at the end of a novel is considered poetic, why can't we make room for Nabokov's translation as poetry? You could tell your guests, when they sample it from your bookshelf and then gasp at the lines, that it is poetically fastidious.

I'm a Russian Language and Literature major in Yonsei Univ. in Korea. Having lived in Moscow for around 3 years, I'd heard there a lot about Pushkin and read many of his famous works. The most prestigious of his, however, must be "Onegin." It's a great mixture of verse and prose in its form. If possible, try to read this in Russian, as well. This long poetical prose was written for 8 years and the ending rhyme perfectly matches for the entire line until the very end. Compared to others, it is definitely a conspicuous and brilliant one. "Onegin" can be the author himself or yourself. The love between Onegin and TaTyana is neither the cheap kind of love that often appears in any books nor the tragic one that is intended to squeze your tears. As a literature, this book covers not only love between passionate youth, but also a large range of literary works in it, which can tell us about the contemporary literature current and its atmosphere. Calling Onegin "My friend", Pushkin, the author, shows the probability and likelihood of the work. Finally, I'm just sorry that the title has been changed into English. The original name must be "Yevgeni Onegin(¬¦¬Ó¬Ô¬Ö¬ß¬Ú¬Û ¬°¬ß¬Ö¬Ô¬Ú¬ß)." If you are a literature major or intersted in it, I'd like to recommand you read this. You can't help but loving the two lovers and may reread it, especially the two correspondences through a long period of time. Only with readng this book, you'll also learn a huge area of the contemporary literature of the 19th century from the books mentioned in "Onegin" that take part as its subtext. Enjoy yourself!

You will find here an ingenous legacy...I mean the translation as a gift, and a bridge, a well done bridge between old Russia and America. Nabokov's creative translation is something more than ...being Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin for a while. This a not little chance to get a green card to the treasury of the russian country. This is simple a ticket to Russia for everybody, and of first class, which think that the more You read the more You are happy...until the last page.

Vladimir Nabokov is one of the great authors of the 20th century, both as a craftsman and stylist in the novel form. He even succeed in grand poetry (Pale Fire), so one would think that his literal translation of Oneigin would be a welcome publication. It's not. First, Nabokov strips Onegin of all poetics, which he admits is his intent. He believes the poem is better understood from a transliteral (almost interlinear) reading than from a poetic reconstruction. This attempt may please, and I stress "may," those who, unfamiliar with Russian, and who want such a bland diet of lackluster prose. But there are so many excellent translations of Onegin that are beautiful and captivating in themselves, I'm not sure there's much need for such a literal, word-for-word, transcription. Perhaps this book belongs on the shelf along with other translations of Onegin, but it's not one I'll return to in the near future.

This is Nabakov's third novel, a moving and bleak picture of a self-obsessed man who decides to obsess on anything but himself. It is wonderfully written, beautiful, an obvious indication of just how marvelous a prose stylist Vladimir was, but I sometimes found myself wondering if I really cared. Of course, I find chess to be terribly dull (perhaps my own lack of ability at the game having something to do with this), but that didn't stop me from admiring the compelling structure of the narrative--the world reduced to a chess board and the people taking on the individual characteristics (including the methods of movement) of the various pieces.

I'm sticking with Nabakov, continuing on, hoping that he was more than just a nifty stylist and eventually blossomed into that rarist treat: A stylish author who understands how to tell an engaging story.

Out of print? Out of print??? I assume that Vintage are waiting for the movie tie-in edition, or something. It's in print in my country, anyway, under its proper title "The Luzhin Defence".

This is, as Brian Boyd says in his excellent Nabokov biography, its author's first masterpiece. I am an execrable chess player, but I know just about enough about the game (and am obsessive enough about various other things) to find its shambling, mumbling hero one of my favourite characters in the Nabokov oeuvre. I've always liked Nabokov's less clubbable heroes - although I recognise that "The Gift" is a greater novel, I can get a bit tired of Fyodor's limitless resourcefulness and poise. (I got impatient with "Ada" for much the same reason.) The unsocial and inarticulate Luzhin is more my kind of character. Surely John Turturro was born to play this character, even if the movie isn't that great.

John Updike, in his afterword, gets a bit sniffy about the meticulous patterning of the book, but I think he fails to appreciate the scope and grip of Luzhin's insanity. This is one of the saddest books Nabokov ever wrote, but also one of the most openly compassionate. Later on, there were more intricate and more skilful games being played with our need to (dodgy word coming) "empathise" with a central character, but "The Luzhin Defence" is still the first book Nabokov wrote that has the mark of the master.

I really like this book. It really is a sad little tale which
reminds me of the quite desperation of my own life. I felt sorry for
Pnin when I read this book. It is a short read but a good one.

John

Disappointing--Well written, of course, but uneventful. If Nabokov was trying to convey a quiet, uneventful sadness filled with ennui--he has succeeded almost too well! The book is as dull and unwitty as its subject(Pnin)although quietly likable--but not likable enough. Read "Ada"--great fun.

I think it's a shame the 'Collected Stories', with its dull chronological order and unimaginative completeness, has come to supersede the four volumes specially prepared by Nabokov in the 1970s, which were, as his son and co-translator Dmitri says, 'painstakingly assorted and orchestrated by Nabokov using various criteria - theme, period, atmosphere, uniformity and variety'. the stories were translated with these volumes in mind, and to break up their order is to risk destroying Nabokov's carefully calculated voice.

The stories in 'Details of a Sunset', written between 1924 and 1935, mostly centre on the Russian emigre experience in Berlin Nabokov himself was living, as he struggled to write his first novels. It is a world of pale, starving writers, small, shabby rooms, dark, streetlamp-lit streets, jerky trams; a world in which present love affairs are bleak and deadly, and ideal ones are ruptured by misunderstanding or death; where reunions with lost family members are painfully inopportune.

this could all sound oppressively glum; what makes these stories sparkle is Nabokov's aggressively alert consciousness, his ability to literally light up the dreary by illuminating tiny, irrelevant details that combine to create magical tableaux - a focus on the material that produces an exciting spiritual rush.

Two stories here, 'A Bad Day' and 'Orache', would be later reworked in Nabokov's miraculous memoir 'Speak, Memory', and already the Russian's charged nostalgia exerts a magnetic pull. 'A Busy Man' is a little masterpiece about a hack writer who half-recollects the recollection of a childhood dream that may or may not have foretold his death on his 33rd birthday; 'A slice of life' is a sordid fait diver shot through with sympathy (and a rare excursion by the author into female first person narrative). 'A Guide to Berlin' is possibly the best story he wrote, a cartography not of famous landmarks, but the more hauntingly insistent humdrum - pipes waiting by the road to be dug in; dancing in a cafe; a huge tear on an actress' face in the cinema.

Having bought this book mainly as something to read while travelling I found it to be not only a wonderful read but a gold mine of information.

The book is not simply a translation of Lermontov's "A hero of our time" But also includes a biography of Lermontov with corresponding time like to historical events and notable poets and writers of the time, a large and detailed introduction to the novel and also well written comprehensive notes to the text which included geographical place names, explanations of words both Russian and Turkish that are used throughout and some commentary on the text.

Not being a native speaker of Russian I am in no position to comment on the quality of the translation but in the introduction to the text the translator comments on some of the poor translations that have come before him and also that some translators have either only partially translated the text or have elaborated on the text believing that by doing so it would become more readable to the English speaking audience. Our translator however, seems to be of the opinion that he is faithful to the original Russian.

The novel itself consists of 5 stories centred around the north Caucuses where Russian troops were stationed while fighting the mountain Circassian and Chechen people in the 19th Century. The novel revolves around a young officer who on arriving meets up with a senior officer who having spent several years in the Caucuses has a fair few stories to tell and begins to narrate one of a young man who fell in love with a young Circassian girl and its tragic end. It seems clear that the senior man has a great deal of admiration for the junior officer and on meeting him again is disappointed at being given the cold shoulder. The younger officer does however, leave behind a collection of his journals that make up the last 3 stories of the novel.

Is is a wonderful short novel evoking the likes of Tolstoy and Pushkin in its tragedy. The main character is something of a reflection of Lermontov himself.

My edition is the everyman classic edition and on checking on amazon US it seems the paperback edition is the only one available in the US. I would however advise buying the everyman edition as it is a hardback and I believe not much more expensive than the paperback.

For anyone, like me, more familiar with Nabokov's more famous English work (in my case Bend Sinister, Lolita, Pale Fire), the first Russian stories in this collection might come as something of a shock. Inevitably, being translated, they lose what was presumably their magic in Russian; and as the joy of Nabokov is language (what he does with it; how he expresses meaning through his manipulation of it, rather than ideas or narrative; how he is its most beautiful exponent of the century), one is left with a feeling of frustration adn dissatisfaction. There is little of the callous burlesque which invade his most delicate artifacts. 'The Aurelian' could almost have been written by Simenon. Others have the nostalgic melancholy of Turgenev. This is all very nice, but it's not Nabokov.

And yet, it is. 'Cloud, Castle, Lake', for example, combines the familiar Nabokovian disjunction between elegance of style and content of the most horrific viciousness. There is a definite increase in pleasure when one gets to the English stories - the tone, created through language, in unmistakably Nab - narrators, resembling Nabokov in suavity, taste and intelligence, are actually feckless idiots, with their creator smiling behind them.

There is, though, very little to smile about in these stories. Spanning (in composition)the period of Stalinism, Nazism, World War II and McCarthy era USA, they detail the complete derailment of the Enlightenment project in our century. Each time rationality, the power of the intellect or the artist is asserted, it is always denied by exile, totalitarianism, madness, deformity, conformity, self-destructive urges, unknowable terrors, but most importantly, by knowledge of the deception inherent in writing. Each story begins with an assertion, and the confident possibility of giving expression to the world, and ends with these values rigorously distorted, fragmented, smashed and broken by that world.

And yet it is only through the mind that we can escape this evil, through nostalgia, recreation, possibility, artistry, transcendence. 'Lance' is an extraordinary, baffling, ambivalent parable highlighting this. Is its vision of the sublime delusive? Does this matter if we can fumble towards imagining it?

Almost every character in these stories languishes in some kind of prison, trying to escape, seek epiphany in some way connected with the mind, whether it's a simple, sensual appreciation of beauty (a fluttering butterfly; a reflection of a cloud on a lake), or a quiet kindness to someone else, helping us escape our crushing solipsism. 'Signs and Symbols' is the key story, its deceptive simplicity masking untold anguish.

I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the astonishment of watching Nabokov in full flight, but there is so much wealth in these stories, which require untold rereading - not just to extract meaning, but to savour again, and again, their remarkable beauty, their deadpan comedy, their impotent apprehension of terror and brutality (although there is a persistant failure in the portrayal of women) - to remind us why Nabokov is the century's greateat.

A bit too long and deep for it's misleading title, NOTES ON PROSODY remains influential in the continuing study of English and Russian poetry. Nabokov's ideas about "scudded feet" and "tilts," while not adopted into the orthodoxy on scansion, are still read widely by the folks who study it, folks whose bibliographies led me to this little volume. It's worth a read, especially if one would like a witty, concise survey of the iambic tetrameter in English or a study of Pushkin's deployment of it in EUGENE ONEGIN.

Those who arrive here as fans of VN's novels should steer instead towards SPEAK, MEMORY (his autobio) or LECTURES ON LITERATURE for their Nabokovian non-fiction. Imagine a joke written in French here. Happy hunting!