Brian Boyd
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231158572
- eISBN:
- 9780231530293
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231158572.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
At the age of twenty-one, the author wrote a thesis on Vladimir Nabokov that Nabokov called “brilliant.” After gaining exclusive access to the writer's archives, he wrote a two-part, award-winning ...
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At the age of twenty-one, the author wrote a thesis on Vladimir Nabokov that Nabokov called “brilliant.” After gaining exclusive access to the writer's archives, he wrote a two-part, award-winning biography, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (1990) and Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (1991). This collection features essays written by the author since completing the biography, incorporating material he gleaned from his research as well as new discoveries and formulations. The book confronts Nabokov's life, career, and legacy; his art, science, and thought; his subtle humor and puzzle-like storytelling; his complex psychological portraits; and his inheritance from, reworking of, and affinities with Shakespeare, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Machado de Assis. It offers new ways of reading Nabokov's best English-language works: Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and the unparalleled autobiography, Speak, Memory, and he discloses otherwise unknown information about Nabokov's world. Sharing his personal reflections, the author recounts the adventures, hardships, and revelations of researching Nabokov's biography and his unusual finds in the archives, including materials still awaiting publication. The first to focus on Nabokov's metaphysics, he cautions against their being used as the key to unlock all of Nabokov's secrets, showing instead the many other rooms in Nabokov's castle of fiction that need exploring, such as his humor, narrative invention, and psychological insight into characters and readers alike. Appreciating Nabokov as novelist, memoirist, poet, translator, scientist, and individual, the book helps us understand more than ever Nabokov's multifaceted genius.Less
At the age of twenty-one, the author wrote a thesis on Vladimir Nabokov that Nabokov called “brilliant.” After gaining exclusive access to the writer's archives, he wrote a two-part, award-winning biography, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (1990) and Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (1991). This collection features essays written by the author since completing the biography, incorporating material he gleaned from his research as well as new discoveries and formulations. The book confronts Nabokov's life, career, and legacy; his art, science, and thought; his subtle humor and puzzle-like storytelling; his complex psychological portraits; and his inheritance from, reworking of, and affinities with Shakespeare, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Machado de Assis. It offers new ways of reading Nabokov's best English-language works: Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and the unparalleled autobiography, Speak, Memory, and he discloses otherwise unknown information about Nabokov's world. Sharing his personal reflections, the author recounts the adventures, hardships, and revelations of researching Nabokov's biography and his unusual finds in the archives, including materials still awaiting publication. The first to focus on Nabokov's metaphysics, he cautions against their being used as the key to unlock all of Nabokov's secrets, showing instead the many other rooms in Nabokov's castle of fiction that need exploring, such as his humor, narrative invention, and psychological insight into characters and readers alike. Appreciating Nabokov as novelist, memoirist, poet, translator, scientist, and individual, the book helps us understand more than ever Nabokov's multifaceted genius.
Gay Directors, Gay Films?
Abominable Science!
Acts of God and Man
AIDS Between Science and Politics
The AIDS Conspiracy
American Showman
Another Person's Poison
Anticipating a Nuclear Iran
Aristotle's Ladder, Darwin's Tree
