Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with nabokov

anagram of Dmitri Nabokov? V. Sirin II?

mustcatchmooseandsquirrel — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:42:49 -0800

What is Dmitri Nabokov's pen name? I read (on Slate, on wikipedia, etc) that he writes under a pen name but doesn't disclose it. I know that I'm probably not going to find a real answer, but I'm interested in finding academic speculation to read about what it could be. I tried googling for discussion about this but couldn't find a thing.

Girls through the looking glass

zoomorphic — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:55:53 -0800

I'm looking for both films, books, and short stories where the story of a girl or a woman is told solely through the perspective of a male narrator. I finally got around to reading Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides last week and subsequently watched the Coppola film. I realized that, like, Lolita, the story of the Lisbon girls is distilled through the eyes of male narrators. It's entirely possible that the scenes with only the Lisbon girls and their parents are confabulations imagined by the boys. If that's the case, both Lolita and the Lisbon girls have no control over their own stories. Are there any other works of literature that tackle this refracted narration?

Film examples are perhaps trickier, since "perspective" can turn into the broader form of "cinematography," so I'm not looking for movies in which a girl's story is simply filmed by a man, but the narrative is otherwise hers. Obviously, I'm already counting both Coppola and Kubrick's adaptations.

Bonus points for any film/lit criticism about this subject that goes beyond the simple "male gaze" theories.

So... not Hemingway.

zoomorphic — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:38:05 -0800

ProseFilter: Nabokov's Lolita was once hailed as "a love letter to the English language." I'm looking for modern and contemporary authors with similar aspirations. I have a hankering for prose almost to rich for my blood. I specifically love Nabokov's ability to draw tensile connections between object and literary signifier: in Lolita, skies are "heavenlogged," killers are "goatish," plain women are "terrestrial."

I also waded through Ada, and very much enjoyed Atonement, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Midnight's Children, Middlesex, Song of Solomon, and God of Small Things.

What else should I pick up?

Atheism as taboo in fiction?

archae — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:56:42 -0800

Book-filter: Nabokov commented on Lolita that there were only three taboos in American publishing: incest, interracial marriage and "the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106." Did Nabokov(or anyone else for that matter), ever write a notable book about this latter taboo?

What is up with Vladimir Nabokov's "Laura" ?

Jireel — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:33:21 -0800

To this day, what do we know about Dimitri Nabokov (Vladimir Nabokov's son) decision to burn his father'as last book : Laura ? LiterracyFilter : As you may know if you clicked on my question, Dimitri Nabokov (now an elderly man) has declared, last august (august 2007) that he would someday burn his father's last masterpiece, the unfinished book "Laura", a powerful description of the author's very fist love, which he also described as the most brilliant of them all..... in order to respect his father's last will. But other sources informed the medias that his nurse, writing down every single words of the author's last weeks deliriums, may have gotten the final version of what Nabokov wanted to make, of his book. Of course, such a finding, if ever published, may have quite an impact on modern litterature..

Yet I cannot find the "latest" news of the whole thing: does anyone know what is going to happen ? thanx

Who's the ape who drew its own cage?

Greg Nog — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:30:53 -0800

The tale: an ape in a zoo is taught how to draw. The first thing it draws is the bars of its cage. I've heard this story a couple of times (often in connection with Vladimir Nabokov), but can't find any information about the original experiment. Did this actually happen? Is it just a fable? Did Nabokov get Punk'd? Who was this ape and where can I find out more?

My memory ain't speakin'.

Ian A.T. — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:57:55 -0800

I need some help finding a short Nabokov passage. I've exhausted Amazon's Search Inside feature as well as my ability to Google. In one of his books, a character is describing the abilities of another. They are something like "He can play the violin, he can read books upside down, he can do magic tricks." (These are very approximate examples, not quotes.)

Finally, a small child (?) pipes up and says "He can also drive a taxi."

Obviously, just a book title would make me happy. But if someone would go to the trouble of typing in the (rather short) passage, a reward will be forthcoming. (Hint: in addition to driving a taxi, I also own a used bookstore.)

'Lolita' copyright status

sindark — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 15:11:46 -0800

Is Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita still under copyright? I ask because a site calling itself The Nabokov Library has a Word version available for download. (280kb ZIP) Much of the site is in Russian, and thus not legible to me.

The forum already seems to include an angry post written by Nabokov's son, but he doesn't specifically mention the ability to download Lolita as a problem.

How does this riddle from "Speak Memory" work?

adrober — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 14:29:59 -0800

In Nabokov's autobiography, "Speak Memory," there is a puzzle of sorts. It goes like this (from pg. 70): "We subjected [Uncle Ruka] to a test one day, and in a twinkle he turned the sequence '5.13 24.11 13.16 9.13.5 5.13 24.11' into the opening words of a famous monologue in Shakespeare." I'm stuck, can anyone help?