Vladimir Nabokov : The American Years - Hardcover

Boyd, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 069106797X ISBN 13: 9780691067971

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1991

Synopsis

The story of Nabokov's life continues with his arrival in the United States in 1940. He found that supporting himself and his family was not easy--until the astonishing success of Lolita catapulted him to world fame and financial security.

About this title

About the Author:

Brian Boyd is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of the prize-winning Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton 1990), Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton 1991), and Nabokov's Ada: The Place of Consciousness. Referred to in a recent journal as "the great man of Nabokov studies," he has also edited Nabokov's English novels and autobiography for the Library of America and Nabokov's Butterflies for Beacon Press.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Magnificent last volume of Boyd's critical biography of Vladimir Nabokov (Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, 1990). What comes through here even more strongly than in volume one is not only a new Nabokov, a masterly teacher-scholar-poet- critic-translator-scientist, but also a human being and novelist not to be confused with his own heroes such as Humbert Humbert or Van Veen any more than Shakespeare should be seen as Lear, Hamlet, or Macbeth. Nabokov, though, is widely seen as a supreme narcissist, even by sympathetic readers--but no longer. Boyd revises everything, all of our misreadings and received ideas, and especially those passed on by Andrew Field's apparently insensitive biographies and commentaries. Everywhere throughout this biography fearful literary folk find themselves in the presence of a self-assured man of simple warmth and friendliness, full of fun and understanding, kindness and courtesy, who appreciates ``the intelligent and observant people who bring me fruit and wine, or come to repair radiators and radios.'' Boyd also takes on the Edmund Wilson/Nabokov feud over Nabokov's 13- year, four-volume work on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin--and Wilson fares badly. As Nabokov rises from destitution to world fame, his each work is taken apart here at great length, much as Nabokov would dissect butterfly genitalia, to get at its aesthetic bliss. A small woman, Vera Nabokov often comes through as seen through Vladimir's eye (he was besotted with his wife to his last breath) as she grapples with the herculean labors of typing up his longhand index cards and keeping up with his colossal business needs in a hydra-growth of languages and countries. After Lolita, contracts flood in and the author finds himself working on five books while composing a sixth in his head. What this biography will do for Nabokov can only be guessed. But for the reader it will awaken a great block of humanity. (Photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 069106797X
• ISBN 13: 9780691067971
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 804