Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years by Brian Boyd (PDF)

Description

The story of Nabokov’s life continues with his arrival in the United States in 1940. He found that supporting himself and his family was not easy–until the astonishing success of Lolita catapulted him to world fame and financial security.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐A work of art in itself, Boyd succeeds (where Andrew Field failed) , writing a lucid and insightful critical autobiography of Nabokov, recounting the life and works of a literary titan. My only complaint would be with the Kindle edition where the footnotes are not hyperlinked.

⭐I love Nabokov and was glad to have found this book.Unfortunately the copy was damaged by water and smelled moldy.Otherwise a great biography of one of my favorite writer.

⭐I so wish the product discretions for used items was a lot more descriptive.

⭐If I found the previous volume a bit ponderous in its detailed critiques of Nabokov’s translated works (few of which I liked), this one struck me as far more vital, even consistently fascinating. Arriving as a refugee without money and few connections, in just over a decade Nabokov becomes an important educator and then the most famous writer in the English language as well as a noted scientist. He then secludes himself in Switzerland and writes, though rather weighed down by the establishment of his legacy in multiple languages. It is an astonishing trajectory.Upon arrival, Nabokov is lucky. He establishes a friendship with Edmund Wilson and gets a foothold in the New Yorker. This enables him to write for at least part of his living, which he anchors with a fellowship in lepidoptery at Harvard and a teaching post in basic Russian at Wellesley. So begins a prodigious period of productivity, both in literature and science. Indeed, he spent up to 6 hours a day at the laboratory engaged in such things as separating the genitalia of certain butterfly species. If his novels, more “political” in this period, did not achieve commercial success, he continued to write for a select audience. This was a somewhat tenuous lifestyle until he got a break as a professor at Cornell.This is where Boyd’s bio becomes extremely interesting. Unlike his father, who was a progressive politician (for an aristocrat), Nabokov was a radical individualist in art and life: he preferred the personal detail, the intimate daily struggles to the general trend or historical context. This did not make him a rightwing libertarian, far from it. With this perspective (one of the things that attracted me to him as a student unschooled in history and politics), he taught literature in a unique manner. The great writer, he argued, must tell a story, inform, and enchant. While the needs for a good plot and some unexplainable magic are obvious, the informing part offers a crucial distinction that many lit profs of his time neglected: the construction of a self-contained, imaginary world that is complete and coherent in its minutia. He advised his students to picture not just the architecture of scenes, but what the protagonists were feeling, wearing, and eating. His approach found a wide audience, so much so that he may have become the most popular prof on campus. He also spent 5 years on a controversial translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which many saw as a failure.Then there was the evolution of his art: Lolita. This is the novel that hooked me on the Nab for life, an ambiguous story of the rape and exploitation of a 12-year-old girl by a middle-aged man who was completely indifferent to her feelings. Instead of a loving relationship, he was recreating and imposing one, perhaps largely imagined, from his childhood. On one level it is a ghastly story. But on another it is a psychological thriller and mystery of utter uniqueness. Add to that his humor and the extraordinary language he employs and you have one of the greatest masterpieces of 20C art. After a long struggle to get it published that Boyd tells in lurid detail, it became a runaway best seller, establishing Nabokov as a literary celebrity beyond his wildest dreams. He also gained the means to live independently for the rest of this life.If anything, Nabokov got even busier, overseeing translations of his Russian- and English-language work, working on a scientific book on butterflies that was never finished, and writing some of his best novels. Quite the fulfilled life. Boyd also continues to softball his approach to Nabokov’s personal life, de-emphasizing it in favor of the art. Perhaps this is the way it should be, but I wanted more. The fallout with Edmund Wilson is covered, but superficially.While Pnin is my other preferred novel, he undertook Ada, which Boyd informs us is his most ambitious and deepest (on the nature of love, memory, time, etc.). I just don’t see it. I remember reading Ada during a college summer vacation; I thought it was boring and bizarre, involving incest, lesbian incest, and a kind of parallel world, Antiterra, that mixes Russia and America; the protagonists were self-absorbed narcissists and the philosophizing left me indifferent – pontification easily forgotten. (“I don’t analyze, I describe.” Or Van puts on sunglasses and wonders if impacts his perception of time.) Boyd goes on way too long about this, but it may appeal to aficionados or Nab cultists. His criticism is good and one does see more from it.The book concludes with Nabokov’s fight with Andrew Field, his first biographer and the one I read back in the 70s. They had a nasty feud, which Boyd argues was due to Field’s deficiencies. I did not find Field very good either, so perhaps this opinion is due less to professional rivalry than honest criticism.I enjoyed this volume much more than the first, which is saying a lot. If Boyd is too much of an introverted academic for my taste, he is a genuinely talented writer in his own right. Recommended.

⭐Outstanding piece of scholarship!

⭐It is difficult to imagine that the two volumes of Boyd’s magisterial biography will ever be surpassed. The level of detail can be overwhelming, but for the serious Nabokov student both volumes are mandatory reading. I have one comment that takes off from Philip Tudor’s customer review, in which he discusses VN’s negativity toward gays. In his youth Nabokov had wanted to collect butterflies in Central Asia, but the Revolution undid his plans and he never got to do so. But a number of years before another aristocratic Russian, Andrey Avinoff, had done exactly that. He emigrated to America long before VN, bringing part of his collections with him, and ended up in Pittsburgh as a researcher at the Carnegie Museum, which published his magnum opus, a monograph of the Central Asian butterfly genus Karanasa. Boyd mentions that when VN arrived in America he contacted Avinoff, but doesn’t pursue the matter. The book “Nabokov’s Butterflies” contains a fragment of a later letter to Avinoff asking for the loan of some American specimens, so we know they remained in contact. But did VN ever visit the Carnegie and meet with Avinoff in person? Avinoff was also an accomplished artist and was openly gay. His art incorporates many flamboyantly homoerotic themes. One wonders if that was a factor in the relations between the two most important Russian-emigre Lepidopterists in America. It’s one detail Boyd, for whatever reason, does not pursue.

⭐Personally I feel that Nabokov was not only one of the three greatest writers of the 20th century, he was also by far the most fascinating. Who has lived such an incredible life? From Czarist Russia to England to Berlin to Paris to the U.S.; butterfly hunter, chess fiend, and writer of some of the wittiest and funniest books ever written. He and the equally fascinating Vera! Boyd has written one of the best biographies I’ve ever had the joy to read, with wonderful photos as well. And it’s satisfying to see Nabokov, past 70, looking like a young man atop a mountain on a beautiful eternal sunny day and know that all those bloated frauds of pseudo -literature, all those fun fellows who defended Stalin and co. to well past the bitter end, are alcoholic messes sitting around somewhere in diapers, or helping the grass grow.

⭐Primo volume di una fondamentale biografia di Nabokov. Indispensabile a chi voglia sapere su questo autore quel che c’è da sapere. Libro usato ma in buono stato.Arrivasto entro i termini previsti.Tutto perfetto, il libro, il suo stato, la spedizione dagli Usa.まず「上巻」を先に買って読み始めたが、なんと！「原注」がどこにも記載がない。どうも原注は上・下巻分併せて下巻に載せられているようだ。こんな書物は初めてだ（むか～し、こういう本もあったかもしれないが）。「原注」など気にしないで読み進めればいいのだが、そういうわけにもいかない。しょうがないからさっき「下巻」も注文したが、つまり、上巻を読むときには、電車の中だろうがベッドの上だろうが、必ずそばに下巻を置いておかなくてはならない。わたしは学者ではないので書斎もないし、どこででも本を読みたいのだが、この本の編集は「書斎がない人は読むな！」という編集のように思えてしまう。本の到着は遅かったのですがナボコフのアメリカ時代はまだ、日本語に訳されておらず、この本が頼みの綱です。ナボコフ研究者なら必読書であります。

⭐

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