This item is currently not available. If you have this item,
Join and post it to share with others.
The late Vladimir Nabokov always did thingshis way, and his classic autobiography is no exception. No dry recital of dates, names, and addresses for this linguistic magician--instead,Speak, Memory is a succession of lapidary episodes, in which the factoids play second fiddle to the development of Nabokov's sensibility. There is, to be sure, an impressionistic whirl through the author's family history (including a gallery of Tartar princes and fin-de-siècle oddities). And Nabokov's account of his tenure at St. Petersburg's famous Tenishev School--where he counted Osip Mandelstam among his schoolmates--offers a lovely glimpse into the heart of Russia's silver age. Still, Nabokov is much too artful an autobiographer to presentSpeak, Memory as a slice of reality--a word, by the way, that he insisted must always be surrounded by quotation marks.
A Master's Masterpiece So much has been said about Nabokov and his glittering brilliance. To add my words and thoughts feels like an unimportant exercise in my ego's need for expression. However, I feel such an appreciation for the Master's wordsmithing that I can't resist. No one turns a phrase and evokes the specifics of a moment like Nabokov.
In this memoir he takes us through his privileged childhood, the memories of his beautiful mother and the fall into change that arrives with the transformation of Russia. No matter what Nabokov describes, the reader becomes mesmerized by the beauty of his writing and his sentences which deliberately fly away and return like the butterflies the Master so eagerly and methodically collected. Who else could have written a book like "Lolita" with its seamy, untouchable subject matter and turned it into a piece of literature which is still taught and marveled at to this day?
A poetic autobiography The flavor , the style the special kind of intense perceptiveness of visual reality makes this autobiography a kind of impressionistic tone- poem. Nabakov writes of his childhood in the aristocratic home and family he is to be exiled from. He writes with longing of the world that has past, and with an intense kind of vitality of his own passions for literature, lepidoptery , love. This is next to Pnin, and Ada my favorite work of Nabakov. It does not press forward on a bedrock of fact but swirls through the mind with color and a beautiful intricacy of language. Quintessential Nabokov .Poetic prose This is one of the most beautifully written biographies I've ever read, though I can clearly see why it might not be for everyone. There are many passages throughout the book that read more like poetry than biography. His artistic sensibilities are present everywhere. The details he remembers are astounding but not unbelievable. Those blessed with photographic memories are able to capture so much that the rest of us miss. The beauty of Nabokov is that he doesn't just give us the memory in a few lines of straight history. He DRAWS the memory for you. He makes it come to life. He gives it color and movement. Absolutely gorgeous!
For those who are not fans of poetry and find long passages about colors and smells and sounds to be boring, this is definitely not the book for you. I'd mostly recommend it to artists and poets, or those who truly love Nabokov.
