by Vladimir Nabokov, Stefan Rudnicki
The thing that makes a good story are characters we care about placed in incredible moments. The problem with so many biographies and autobiographies is that, in order to dutifully encompass a lifetime of experiences, the writer takes a wide-angle lens of events without ever allowing the reader an o...
This book is amazing, not for the story it tells but for how that story is written. It consists of essays written and published at different times and places, but it all holds together. Each chapter follows the other in basically chronological order. Let the author speak for himself:For the present ...
Listened to "My Russian Education" on The New Yorker podcast, read by Orhan Pamuk. I'm not sure Pamuk was the ideal choice of reader, given his tendency to place emphasis on the wrong syllable in almost every single word - but it was entertaining! I have very little idea what the story was about tho...
I did not like the autobiography so it gets one star, but because it was exquisitely written it gets another star to boot. But that doesn't make the book good or very much fun to read. It was similar to orally having to swallow some very disgusting-tasting medicine. And I am really not sure why I ha...
Irresistable.
Vladimir Nabokov is one of those geniuses I always felt somehow uneasy about. What I knew about him? Very little.During his literary career, Nabokov wrote ten novels in Russian, nine in English together with hundreds of short stories and poems.And what I had read of all this astonishing production? ...
Nabokov's work always has a certain delicacy, as if the edges are fading from reality to dream, yet with the clarity of a writer who chooses the perfect word every single time. The subject matter in Speak, Memory varies according to time and place and train of thought, but his brilliant evocations ...
Not too many things to say about Nabokov’s memories. It’s just that you discover the writer behind his work (so far Lolita, in my case), daydreaming and wishing you were one of his playmates in that idyllic Russian countryside or my old love, Sankt Petersburg. His incursions into the past, Mnemosina...
One of the greatest literary autobiographies ever - a model for how to do it. My favourite anecdote: when he talks about how cold it was in his student room, he denies the rumour that the water in his toothmug froze solid during the night. Just a crisp layer of ice on the top, that he broke with his...
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