Anyone read Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin? Beautifully written amusing and bittersweet novel full of pathos for a Russian expat in America who can't fit in in his Russian teaching at a college, and whose broken English means he is forever clumsy in his attempts to connect with people. One of those rare stories you wouldn't get nowadays of a guy who can never get anything right, and everything wrong seems to happen to him despite his best efforts, and yet Pnin's treatment in the book is incredibly sincere and without a hint of emotionally detached sarcasm or irony. There's so many sentimental and amusing scenes. I love the moment when he watches in perverse fascination at how a washing machine works by putting his shoes in the machine to hear them clunk around "like an army going over a bridge", or when he apologises to his class before showing them a home video explaining Russian hand gestures, for his "negligent toilet" (a hilarious mistake but I presume he meant 'neglected toilet' as in unkept). And then there are gorgeous passages like this one talking about getting dentures: #books #reading #Nabokov

Anyone read Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin? Beautifully written amusing and sad novel full of pathos for a Russian expat in America who can't fit in in his Russian teaching at a college, and whose broken English means he is forever clumsy in his attempts to connect with people. One of those rare stories you wouldn't get nowadays of a guy who can never get anything right, and everything wrong seems to happen to him despite his best efforts, and yet Pnin's treatment in the book is incredibly sincere and without a hint of emotionally detached sarcasm or irony. There's so many sentimental and amusing scenes. I love the moment when he watches in perverse fascination at how a washing machine works by putting his shoes in the machine to hear them clunk around "like an army going over a bridge", or when he apologises to his class before showing them a home video explaining Russian hand gestures, for his "negligent toilet" (a hilarious mistake but I presume he meant 'neglected toilet' as in unkept). And then there are gorgeous passages like this one talking about getting dentures: #books #reading #Nabokov

Anyone read Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin? Beautifully written amusing and sad novel full of pathos for a Russian expat in America who can't fit in in his Russian teaching at a college, and whose broken English means he is forever clumsy in his attempts to connect with people. One of those rare stories you wouldn't get nowadays of a guy who can never get anything right, and everything wrong seems to happen to him despite his best efforts. There's so many sentimental and amusing scenes. I love the moment when he watches in perverse fascination at how a washing machine works by putting his shoes in the machine to hear them clunk around "like an army going over a bridge", or when he apologises to his class before showing them a home video explaining Russian hand gestures, for his "negligent toilet" (a hilarious mistake but I presume he meant 'neglected toilet' as in unkept). And then there are gorgeous passages like this one talking about getting dentures: #books #reading #Nabokov

"I am weak. I write badly. I may die tonight. My magic carpet no longer skims over crown canopies and gaping nestlings, and her rarest orchids. Insert."

#NABOKOV

"The rapture of her identity, placed under the microscope of reality, shows a complex system of those subtle bridges which the senses traverse - laughing, embraced, throwing flowers in the air - between membrane and brain, and which always was and is a form of memory."

#NABOKOV

4. Ada, or Ardor | Nabokov 1969
The title itself is a puzzle before you even open to the first (dense) page. "Ad" is "hell" in Russian, "da" means "yes" and in British English "Ada" and "Ardour" are homophones, so it all sounds like ["Ada oh Ada"]. A typically lyrical, despicable #Nabokov love story (the protagonist's surname is Russian for "guilt" [Veen]), a lifetime long, the whole thing taking place among and between three languages, on another planet.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/ada-or-ardor-a-family-chronicle-vladimir-nabokov/15563782?ean=9780679725220

Nabokovova Lolita nepropaguje netradičné hodnoty, tvrdí ruská zákonodarkyňa Tatiana Buckaja. Je vraj nepravdepodobné, že by niekto chcel tento príbeh zopakovať.

🇷🇺 #russia #nabokov #lolita #books #censorship #knihy #cenzura

📰 čítajte na → https://elenky.sk/221220n1

@ChrisCPS @bookstodon Honourable mentions for my top 7 of all time:

#MilanKundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
#AzareenVanDerVlietOloomi, Call Me Zebra
#DionneBrand, The Blue Clerk
#CanXue, Frontier
#Nabokov, Pale Fire
#Kafka, The Trial
#MarkZDanielewski, House of Leaves
#DavidFosterWallace, Infinite Jest
#PaulAnderson, Hunger's Brides
#NealStephenson, Anathem
#NeilGaiman, American Gods
#MaeveBinchy, Evening Class
#JackLondon, White Fang
#LucyMaudMontgomery, Anne of Green Gables series

Guten morgen, #Bookstodon! Last night I had difficulties getting asleep after reading #Nabokov's #PaleFire way past midnight. Shouldn't read after eleven.

This morning the fire itself appeared to me. -10c degrees outside, faintly snowing.

Biggest hammer that blows doors to the jail of the heart is #ASSERTION

No, #Turner and #Purcell can't beat Black Power beauty, #Nabokov is but a talented apprentice to #ToniMorrison♥️

And that's the truth.

Simple statement — I AM — against every evil, against cruel and tired, it's above white art tricks.

I AM was Christ's word too, but you folks no get ear.

✴️

#translation
#Nabokov

"Three grades of evil can be discerned in the queer world of verbal transmigration."

The Art of Translation, The New Republic, August 4, 1941

Reposted: 27 June 2013

* A must read on translation

* Proust because translation of Proust has become part of the discussion of In Search of Lost Time in his centenary year.

* Though this refers to language translation it can be wider applied between one medium and another such as novel to film.
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https://newrepublic.com/article/113310/vladimir-nabokov-art-translation
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Nabokov: "...problems are the poetry of chess. They demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, harmony, conciseness, complexity and splendid insincerity"
Coming soon: Through the Mirror of Chess: A Cultural Exploration: https://ideasroadshow.com/chess/
#chess #film #movie #histodon #culture #history #documentary #art @histodons #games #literature #Nabokov @intellectualhistory @academicchatter @academicbooks @medievodons

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#Nabokov

"Consider the trick of an acrobatic caterpillar (of the Lobster Moth) which in infancy looks like bird's dung, but after moulting develops scabby hymenopteroid appendages and baroque characteristics, allowing the extraordinary fellow to play two parts at once (like the actor in Oriental shows who becomes a pair of intertwining wrestlers): that of writhing larva and that of a big ant seemingly harrowing it."

~ Vladimir Nabokov

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#Nabokov

"Consider the trick of an acrobatic caterpillar (of the Lobster Moth) which in infancy looks like bird's dung, but after moulting develops scabby bymenopteroid appendages and baroque characteristics, allowing the extraordinary fellow to play two parts at once (like the actor in Oriental shows who becomes a pair of intertwining wrestlers): that of writhing larva and that of a big ant seemingly harrowing it."

~ Vladimir Nabokov

I guess it's time for my introduction post, replete with hashtags.

I'm trans.

I transitioned in 1983 and kept my teaching job in Baltimore Public Schools. Retired now in New Mexico.

Love board games, golf, Nabokov, Janis Ian.

#TransKids
#TransYouth
#ListenToTransKids
#TransRights
#Trans
#boardgames
#nabokov

I'm working on a book about #Poe and authors/artists influenced by him. Here are two essays that will become chapters. One is on Poe and #Nabokov; the other is on Poe and #Magritte and a little known, but very important patron of Surrealists, #Edward James. I hope you like! Oh, and if you would like a PDF, message me and I'll email it to you.

https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/48690

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/time-and-literature/time-and-the-return-to-form/39D59E6D777B747E2AAA402DEF35B32C

En ces temps troubles avec la Russie, n'oublions pas les auteurs et leur culture #Nabokov

Letteratura sovietica – “Il dono” di V. Nabokov

"Il dono"Vladimir NabokovRomanzo di letteratura sovieticaAdelphi editorePrima edizione integrale 1952Brossura474 paginehttps://www.adelphi.it/libro/9788845908316

La nostra rubrica di letteratura sovietica ha subito, per ovvi motivi, u

https://www.magozine.it/letteratura-sovietica-il-dono-di-v-nabokov/

#ArteeCultura #Recensionilibri #classico #ildono #letteraturarussa #letteraturasovietica #nabokov #Russia #vladimirnabokov

I'm sure you've asked yourself what a poem written by Vladimir #Nabokov inspired by the cover of a #Superman #comic book might sound like?

Well, the universe delivers!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/04/vladimir-nabokovs-superman-poem-published-for-the-first-time

In in, Clark Kent mourns his inability to have sex or children with Lois Lane, as his superpowers would injure or even kill her.

#comics #superheroes

Vladimir #Nabokov : Lolita - Vidéo http://Ina.fr http://ina.fr/video/I17180258
bien avant que #Pivot ne reçoive complaisamment #Matzneff en oubliant les mots de Nabokov: "En-dehors du regard maniaque (...) il n'y a pas de nymphette"
https://www.ina.fr/contenus-editoriaux/articles-editoriaux/1990-quand-denise-bombardier-denoncait-gabriel-matzneff

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