Saturday, June 14, 2014

The meeting of knowledge and imagination …

… Masterpiece: Nabokov Looks Back at Life Before 'Lolita' - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

"Speak, Memory" is not without its longueurs. A lengthy section is given over to lepidoptery; another to the composition of chess problems. Odd that so great a writer is unable to generate passion in his readers for what were two among his own greatest passions, but it is so. Both, though, touch on his artistic life. Rare butterflies show up in several of his novels and stories. In "The Defense" he wrote one of the great novels about chess, a book whose true theme is obsession.

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