Hiding history in fiction: Nabokov’s Proustian wink
Tomorrow The Secret History will be published! I’m headed up to New York to do my first interview for the book. But before it drops, I wanted post a quick note on something important. I’ve spent the last five years exploring the links between Nabokov’s fiction and the world in which he lived. There’s a […]
Nabokov as digital prophet and Pale Fire as hypertext
Born in the nineteenth century, was literary alchemist Vladimir Nabokov also a digital pioneer for our electronic era? Nabokov’s description of a primordial emoticon from 1969 (“I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile—some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket”*) gets new coverage each decade from those chronicling […]
From the USSR to the OSS: Nicholas Nabokov’s naturalization file
Next up in the Records series of archival material is the naturalization paperwork of Nicholas Nabokov. Nicholas was Vladimir Nabokov’s first cousin on his father’s side. A classical music composer who studied at the Sorbonne, he worked with several legendary cultural figures, including Ballets Russes founder Sergei Diaghilev. Nicholas came to America in 1933, several years before Vladimir […]
