Mad Men, Nabokov, and more praise for The Secret History
What do Entertainment Weekly, The Brooklyn Rail, and the Netherlands’ Radio One all have in common? They’ve been pondering Nabokov! Writing about Mad Men‘s season premiere, EW‘s Keith Staskiewicz begins with a quote from Nabokov (which, he notes, comes from the era in which the episode is set). The two sentences he includes are taken from […]
Nabokov’s wartime escape on the SS Champlain
When Vladimir Nabokov crossed from Europe to America on the SS Champlain in May 1940, he was accompanied by his wife Véra and son Dmitri. I’ve already posted Vladimir’s and Véra’s immigration files. Today I want to share the ship’s passenger record for their trip on the Champlain. In a detail from the first of two pages […]
Isaac Babel and Vladimir Nabokov
Russian author Isaac Babel is reported to have said of his literary contemporary Vladimir Nabokov that “he can write, but he’s got nothing to say.” Early in his career, Babel wrote a short story just three pages long called “Line and Color.” This story goes to the heart of the tension between invention and reality in […]
The winner of The Secret History photo contest
Thanks to all of you who sent in pictures of yourselves with your copy of The Secret History! I’ll announce the winner of the drawing (and explain our super-scientific method for choosing) in a moment. But before we get to that, I’d like to share two photos that knocked my socks off even though they […]
The New Republic weighs in on The Secret History
In June 1962 Mary McCarthy wrote what would become perhaps the most famous review ever written of Nabokov’s Pale Fire. In “Bolt from the Blue,” which ran in the pages of The New Republic, McCarthy called the novel a “a clockwork toy, a chess problem, an infernal machine,” and “one of the very great works of […]
Lolita & anti-Semitism: talking Nabokov at the 92nd St. Y
Do you live or work in Manhattan? If so, join me at noon on Wednesday, March 13, at the 92nd Street Y’s Tribeca location to talk about Nabokov in America. I’ll cover the calamities that turned him into a refugee from both the Soviets and the Nazis, as well as what he found in the […]
