NABOKOV: His Life in Art

by Andrew Field ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 27, 1967

Like Nabokov, Andrew Field apparently thinks little of reviewers so much so that he presents his own blurb in the Introduction. My book, he states authoritatively, is ""a sea chest containing excerpts from and allusions to hundreds of valuable and precious documents....The perplexity that even Nabokov's most fervent admirers have often felt should now...be clarified."" He further draws attention to its ""innovatory nature as a work of criticism: it is formed, that is, it is structured in a way roughly corresponding to that of the narrative in fiction."" Much to this reviewer's chagrin these statements are true. Field's study is the best by far that Nabokov has yet received: prodigiously researched, spiritedly assembled, swelling with implications from chapter to chapter, dispelling mysteries (see the ""family relationship between Solus Rex and Pale Fire), delving acutely into the obscured emigre period of the Twenties and Thirties, precisely marking changes of style and metaphorical pedigrees (including an excellent analysis of the little known poetry), putting the Nabokovian grotesques or exotics in happy biographical or literary perspectives, and exhuming or defending the varied polemical performances or scholarly adventures (the Pushkin case re Edmund Wilson's silly New York Review piece is entertainingly summarized). A definitive audit.

Pub Date: June 27, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1967

Categories: NONFICTION