Think, Write, Speak
Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A rich compilation of the previously uncollected Russian and English prose and interviews of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, edited by Nabokov experts Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy.
“I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child": so Vladimir Nabokov famously wrote in the introduction to his volume of selected prose, Strong Opinions. Think, Write, Speak follows up where that volume left off, with a rich compilation of his uncollected prose and interviews, from a 1921 essay about Cambridge to two final interviews in 1977. The chronological order allows us to watch the Cambridge student and the fledgling Berlin reviewer and poet turn into the acclaimed Paris émigré novelist whose stature brought him to teach in America, where his international success exploded with Lolita and propelled him back to Europe. Whether his subject is Proust or Pushkin, the sport of boxing or the privileges of democracy, Nabokov’s supreme individuality, his keen wit, and his alertness to the details of life illuminate the page.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The more than 150 essays, interviews, and letters collected in this volume, some translated from the Russian for the first time, serve as an illuminating complement to Nabokov's 1973 nonfiction roundup, Strong Opinions. Spanning the years 1921 to 1977 and drawn from sources as diverse as the New Republic, Sports Illustrated, and journals for Europe's Russian migr community, they show the author to have been strongly opinionated on matters that run the gamut from literary style, to his discoveries as an amateur lepidopterist or the cultural impact of his controversial novel Lolita. Nabokov is passionate in his assessment of literary favorites such as Pushkin, whose work he praises for "its ample and powerful lyricism," and bluntly critical of most Soviet literature, which he derides as propagandistic "village dreadful fantasies." His incisive wit and intellectual honesty are also evident in his responses to interviewers' repetitive questions about the scandal caused by Lolita. Nabokov observed, "I write what I like and some like what I write," and his fans will find much to like here.
