It’s not that I expect every artist to justify the ways of God to man, or forge the conscience of his race in the smithy of his soul (blech), or help me free my mind so that my ass may follow, but that strikes me as a depressingly sterile notion of art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception. I discovered in nature the non-utilitarian delights that I sought in art. In one sense, though, the metaphor is well-chosen, because Nabokov really did view art as some kind of occult jiggery-pokery: Also, wasn’t alchemy discredited centuries ago as a bogus pseudo-science?

It’s tacky, not to mention unbearably precious. What irritates me about it is the self-complacency it implies: this is the uptown equivalent of hanging a “Genius at Work” sign on your cubicle wall. That’s a fairly standard trope, I guess: the artist as alchemist. I hope to write some day a “Speak on, Memory,” covering the years 1940-1960 spent in America: the evaporation of certain volatiles and the melting of certain metals are still going on in my coils and crucibles. Six pages into his foreword, he tosses off this gag-inducing little metaphor: But first I need to make fun of Nabokov a bit more. Needless to say, Speak, Memory is one of the most brilliant autobiographies ever written, and I’m just delaying the moment when I throw my panties on the stage along with every other reviewer here. I mean, synesthesia? Who has that? And what kind of douche decides that sleep is too plebeian? Would it have been so hard to come down with herpes and depression like everyone else? Even his ailments had something snobbish about them. (And it’s part of his fastidiousness that he would have despised my handy, pop-culture analogy). Vladimir Nabokov was the Niles Crane of 20th-century literature: snooty, fastidious, and comically inept at being a normal guy. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.

He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard.

In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. One of the 20th century's master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and The Luhzin Defense. A newer edition may be found here.įrom one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time.

Nabokov conclusive evidence