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| 8/18/1958 |
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From Ashes: Nabokov and Lolita
Nabokov had almost burned his manuscript of Lolita in frustration eight years earlier, but when the first American edition finally came out in 1958, it sold out. In days it was into a 3rd printing, in a month it was a #1 best-seller, and by the time Nabokov was on the cover of Newsweek in 1962 about the only one who hadn't read the book was Groucho Marx, who quipped, "I plan to put off reading Lolita for six years -- until she's eighteen." |
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| 10/9/1849 |
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Poe, Nabokov, "Annabel Lee"
On this day in 1849 Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee" was published, just two days after his death: "It was many and many a year ago, / In a kingdom by the sea, / That a maiden there lived whom you may know / By the name of Annabel Lee. . . ." Many and many a year after that, Nabokov would take "Kingdom by the Sea" as his first title for Lolita and make Annabel Leigh his first nymphet. |
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Lolita
fiction |
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited
by Vladimir Nabokov, Brian Boyd (Editor)
memoirs |
Vladimir Nabokov: Novels 1955-1962: Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire, Lolita: A Screenplay
by Vladimir Nabokov, Brian Boyd (Editor)
anthology, fiction |
Vladimir Nabokov: Novels 1969-1974: Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Transparent Things, Look at the Harlequins!
by Vladimir Nabokov, Brian Boyd (Editor)
anthology, fiction |
Vladimir Nabokov: Novels and Memoirs 1941-1951 : The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend Sinister, Speak, Memory
by Vladimir Nabokov, Brian Boyd (Editor)
anthology, fiction |
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FIND BOOKS BY VLADIMIR NABOKOV
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Lolita, Reviewed
A 1958 review from the pages of the Atlantic Monthly.
"The novel's scandal-tinted history and its subject--the affair between a middle-aged sexual pervert and a twelve-year-old girl--inevitably conjure up expectations of pornography. But there is not a single obscene term in Lolita, and aficionados of erotica are likely to find it a dud. Lolita blazes, however, with a perversity of a most original kind. For Mr. Nabokov has distilled from his shocking material hundred-proof intellectual farce. His book is slightly reminiscent of Thomas Mann's Confessions of Felix Krull; but Lolita has a stronger charge of comic genius and is more brilliantly written. Mr. Nabokov, a Russian émigré now working in his second tongue, has few living equals as a virtuoso in the handling of the English language." |  | BBC Interviews
An interview in which the author discusses his dislike of The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, his view of other writers, how he reacts to criticism or speculation about his private life, the abrupt loss of childhood, his view of contemporary Russia, and the difference between genius and talent.
"The word genius is passed around rather generously, isn't it. At least in English, because it's Russian counterpart ghaynie is a term brimming with a sort of throaty awe and is used only in the case of a very small number of writers. Shakespeare, Milton, Pushkin, Tolstoy ... It is a bizarre example of semantic discrepancy. The same word being more substantial in one language than another. ... Genius still means to me in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift, the gift of James Joyce, not the talent of Henry James." | | Nabokov A-Z
A glossary of people, places, and turns of phrase found in Lolita. | | Waxwing
Offers quotes, facts, and very basic general information about the author's life and works. A sister site lists and briefly describes pop culture Nabokov references in the music of Billy Joel, Suzanne Vega, and The Police, and such film and television programs as I Shot Andy Warhol, Northern Exposure, Six Feet Under, and The X-Files.
"By rejecting fads and politics, by refusing to have anything to do with what he called 'novels of ideas,' Nabokov's books are still fresh and sprightly. They're funny, complex, harrowing, and unbelievably readable. ... Everything in a Nabokov novel has a purpose, or seems to. Every word carries weight, which doesn't stop the author from poking fun at Eliot's poetry, psychology, contemporary kitsch, you name it. There is a sort of tug-and-go game between author and reader, reflected in the fiction's benignly lunatic imagined world and in its bemused and befuddled observer. And also skewed narrators galore, grand passions, word-play, crisply drawn landscapes, parks, gardens, hidden images, and river-bright themes. His 'real' world is riddled with trap-doors." | | Zembla - Official Site of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society
Find a detailed biography and timeline of events in the author's life, audio readings, background information about his works, literary criticism and analysis, e-mail discussion list, images of the author, his homes, and his grave, and a selection of essays on Lolita and other subjects.
"A cosmopolitan Russian-born émigré whose linguistic facility, erudite style, and eloquent prose helped to establish him as one of the most brilliant and respected literary figures of the 20th century, Nabokov produced literature and scholarship of beauty, complexity, and inventiveness in both Russian and English." | |
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, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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