Irena Księżopolska, Mikołaj Wiśniewski (Eds.)-Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory

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Irena Księżopolska, Mikołaj Wiśniewski/Ирена Ксензопольская, Миколай Висневский (Eds.), Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory,  SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, 2019:

– Irena Księżopolska, Mikołaj Wiśniewski/Ирена Ксензопольская, Миколай Висневский, « Introduction », p. 7.

– Leona Toker/Леона Токер, « Nabokov’s Factography », p. 21.
– Stephen Blackwell/Стивен Блакуэлл, « Nabokov’s Cryptic Triptych: Grief and Joy in “Sounds,” “The Circle,” And “Lantern Slides” », p. 51.
– Péter Tamás/Петер Тамас, « Vision and Memory in Nabokov’s “A Forgotten Poet” », p. 82.
– Dana Dragunoiu/Дана Драгуною (SFVN), « Time, Memory, the General, and the Specific in Lolita and À la recherche du temps perdu », p. 100.
– David Potter/Давид Потер, « Paramnesia, Anticipatory Memory, and Future Recollection in Ada », p. 123.
– Adam Lipszyc/Адам Липщук, « Memory, Image, and Compassion: Nabokov And Benjamin on Childhood », p. 156.
– Gerard de Vries/Герард де Вриз (SFVN), « Memory and Fiction in Nabokov’s Speak, Memory », p. 173.
– Mikołaj Wiśniewski/Миколай Висневский, « Memory’s Invisible Managers: the Case Of Luzhin », p. 184.
– Andrzej Księżopolski/Анджей Ксензопольский, « Time, History, and other Phantoms in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight », p. 203.
– Irena Księżopolska/Ирена Ксензопольская, « Biographer as Impostor: Banville and Nabokov », p. 226.
– Akiko Nakata/Акико Наката, « Memories Trick – Memories Mix: Transparent Things », p. 254.
– Carlo Comanduccin/Карло Командучин, « Transparent Things, Visible Subjects », p. 274.
– Vyatcheslav Bart/Вячеслав Барт, « Vladimir Nabokov’s Ontological Aestheticism from the Renaissance to Transhumanism », p. 294.
– Olga Dmitrienko/Ольга Дмитриенко, « Reminiscence and Subconscious Sacralisation of the Kin in The Gift », p. 318.
– Tatiana Ponomareva/Татьяна Пономарева, « Epilogue: The Reality of Fiction in The Vladimir Nabokov Museum », p. 330.
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Vladimir Nabokov-Владимир Набоков-Think, Write, Speak

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Vladimir Nabokov/Владимир Набоков, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor, edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Knopf, 2019.

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.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/248288/think-write-speak-by-vladimir-nabokov-edited-by-brian-boyd-and-anastasia-tolstoy/

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Appels de la Société Internationale Vladimir Nabokov

La Société Internationale Vladimir Nabokov lance deux appels dont vous trouverez les détails sur le site The Nabokovian.
Le premier est un appel à communication pour la convention annuelle de la Modern Languages Association. La date de limite d’envoi d’un abstract est au 24 mars. Plus de détails ici
Le deuxième appel est un appel à candidature pour les prix de la recherche sur Nabokov. La date limite est fixée au 30 avril. Plus de détails ici
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Marjorie Worthington, The Story of » Me »: Contemporary American Autofiction, « Masculinity, Whiteness, and Postmodern Self- Consciousness: Vladimir Nabokov, John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Powers », University of Nebraska Press, Frontiers of Narrative Series, 2018.

Autofiction, or works in which the eponymous author appears as a fictionalized character, represents a significant trend in postwar American literature, when it proliferated to become a kind of postmodern cliché. The Story of “Me”charts the history and development of this genre, analyzing its narratological effects and discussing its cultural implications. By tracing autofiction’s conceptual issues through case studies and an array of texts, Marjorie Worthington sheds light on a number of issues for postwar American writing: the maleness of the postmodern canon—and anxieties created by the supposed waning of male privilege—the relationship between celebrity and authorship, the influence of theory, the angst stemming from claims of the “death of the author,” and the rise of memoir culture.

Worthington constructs and contextualizes a bridge between the French literary context, from which the term originated, and the rise of autofiction among various American literary movements, from modernism to New Criticism to New Journalism. The Story of “Me” demonstrates that the burgeoning of autofiction serves as a barometer of American literature, from modernist authorial effacement to postmodern literary self-consciousness.

Link here

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Azar Nafisi/Азар Нафизи, That other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile, transl. from the Persian by Loftali Khonji, Yale University Press, 2019.

The foundational text for the acclaimed New York Times and international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran

The ruler of a totalitarian state seeks validation from a former schoolmate, now the nation’s foremost thinker, in order to access a cultural cache alien to his regime. A literary critic provides commentary on an unfinished poem that both foretells the poet’s death and announces the critic’s secret identity as the king of a lost country. The greatest of Vladimir Nabokov’s enchanters—Humbert—is lost within the antithesis of a fairy story, in which Lolita does not hold the key to his past but rather imprisons him within the knowledge of his distance from that past.

In this precursor to her international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi deftly explores the worlds apparently lost to Nabokov’s characters, their portals of access to those worlds, and how other worlds hold a mirror to Nabokov’s experiences of physical, linguistic, and recollective exile. Written before Nafisi left the Islamic Republic of Iran, and now published in English for the first time and with a new introduction by the author, this book evokes the reader’s quintessential journey of discovery and reveals what caused Nabokov to distinctively shape and reshape that journey for the author.

Azar Nafisi has taught at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, Allameh Tabatabi, and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. She is the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, as well as Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter and The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books.

Link here

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David M. Bethea and Siggy Frank (Eds), Vladimir Nabokov in Context, Cambridge University Press, 2018.

« Vladimir Nabokov, bilingual writer of dazzling masterpieces, is a phenomenon that both resists and requires contextualization. This book challenges the myth of Nabokov as a sole genius who worked in isolation from his surroundings, as it seeks to anchor his work firmly within the historical, cultural, intellectual and political contexts of the turbulent twentieth century. Vladimir Nabokov in Context maps the ever-changing sites, people, cultures and ideologies of his itinerant life which shaped the production and reception of his work. Concise and lively essays by leading scholars reveal a complex relationship of mutual influence between Nabokov’s work and his environment. Appealing to a wide community of literary scholars this timely companion to Nabokov’s writing offers new insights and approaches to one of the most important, and yet most elusive writers of modern literature. »

Lire la suite

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Priscilla Meyer, Nabokov and Indeterminacy. The Case of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, NorthWestern University Press, 2018.

« In Nabokov and Indeterminacy, Priscilla Meyer shows how Vladimir Nabokov’s early novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight illuminates his later work. Meyer first focuses on Sebastian Knight, exploring how Nabokov associates his characters with systems of subtextual references to Russian, British, and American literary and philosophical works. She then turns to Lolita and Pale Fire, applying these insights to show that these later novels clearly differentiate the characters through subtextual references, and that Sebastian Knight’s construction models that of Pale Fire.

Meyer argues that the dialogue Nabokov constructs among subtexts explores his central concern: the continued existence of the spirit beyond bodily death. She suggests that because Nabokov’s art was a quest for an unattainable knowledge of the otherworldly, knowledge which can never be conclusive, Nabokov’s novels are never closed in plot, theme, or resolution—they take as their hidden theme the unfinalizability that Bakhtin says characterizes all novels.

The conclusions of Nabokov’s novels demand a rereading, and each rereading yields a different novel. The reader can never get back to the same beginning, never attain a conclusion, and instead becomes an adept of Nabokov’s quest. Meyer emphasizes that, unlike much postmodern fiction, the contradictions created by Nabokov’s multiple paths do not imply that existence is constructed arbitrarily of pre-existing fragments, but rather that these fragments lead to an ever-deepening approach to the unknowable. »

Url de référence :

http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/nabokov-and-indeterminacy

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Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Vera, Translated and edited by Olga Voronina & Brian Boyd, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

« No marriage of a major twentieth-century writer is quite a51+5jsuCdCL._SX336_BO1,204,203,200_s beguiling as that of Vladimir Nabokov’s to Véra Slonim. She shared his delight in life’s trifles and literature’s treasures, and he rated her as having the best and quickest sense of humor of any woman he had met. From their first encounter in 1923, Vladimir’s letters to Véra form a narrative arc that tells a half-century-long love story, one that is playful, romantic, pithy and memorable. At the same time, the letters tell us much about the man and the writer. We see the infectious fascination with which Vladimir observed everything—animals, people, speech, the landscapes and cityscapes he encountered—and learn of the poems, plays, stories, novels, memoirs, screenplays and translations on which he worked ceaselessly. This delicious volume contains twenty-one photographs, as well as facsimiles of the letters themselves and the puzzles and doodles Vladimir often sent to Véra. »

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Ben Blatt, Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve. What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing. Simon & Schuster, 2017.

About the book :

« Data meets literature in this “enlightening” (The Wall Street Journal), “brilliant” (The Boston Globe), “Nate Silver-esque” (O, The Oprah Magazine) look at what the numbers have to say about our favorite authors and their masterpieces.

There’s a famous piece of writing advice—offered by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and myriad writers in between—not to use -ly adverbs like “quickly” or “angrily.” It sounds like solid advice, but can we actually test it? If we were to count all the -ly adverbs these authors used in their careers, do they follow their own advice? What’s more, do great books in general—the classics and the bestsellers—share this trait?

In the age of big data we can answer questions like these in the blink of an eye. In Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, a “literary detective story: fast-paced, thought-provoking, and intriguing” (Brian Christian, coauthor of Algorithms to Live By), statistician and journalist Ben Blatt explores the wealth of fun findings that can be discovered by using text and data analysis. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and then he asks the questions that have intrigued book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? What makes a great opening sentence? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?

All of Blatt’s investigations and experiments are original, conducted himself, and no math knowledge is needed to enjoy the book. On every page, there are new and eye-opening findings. By the end, you will have a newfound appreciation of your favorite authors and also come away with a fresh perspective on your own writing. “Blatt’s new book reveals surprising literary secrets” (Entertainment Weekly) and casts an x-ray through literature, allowing us to see both the patterns that hold it together and the brilliant flourishes that allow it to spring to life. »

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Vladimir Nabokov, Lettres à Vera, édition établie par Olga Voronina et Brian Boyd, traduit du russe par Laure Troubetzkoy, Paris, Fayard, 2017.

Lettres-a-Vera

https://www.fayard.fr/litterature-etrangere/lettres-vera-9782213686585

Description de l’éditeur : « Vladimir Nabokov et sa femme Véra se sont rencontrés en 1923, à Berlin, où leurs familles respectives avaient fui le pouvoir bolchevique. Tout au long du demi-siècle que dure leur mariage, ils ne sont séparés que rarement, mais alors il lui écrit chaque jour  : ainsi quand Véra part se soigner dans un sanatorium de la Forêt Noire, quand Vladimir rend visite à sa famille réfugiée à Prague, où quand Véra tarde à le rejoindre à Paris. Plus tard, ses conférences dans le Sud des États-Unis suscitent de nouvelles lettres. Dans toute cette correspondance, pour nous à sens unique – Véra ayant détruit ses propres lettres –,  on voit la passion de Nabokov pour sa femme, sa vie quotidienne dans le milieu de l’émigration russe à Berlin, les bouleversements auxquels tous deux sont confrontés dans leur vie matérielle et affective, le dénuement qui est le sien lors de ses débuts à Paris, l’intérêt croissant suscité par son œuvre auprès des éditeurs et d’un public éclairé, le soutien indéfectible que lui apporte Véra.
Ces lettres, outre ce qu’elles révèlent sur l’homme, nous font découvrir le laboratoire de l’écrivain – son énergie créatrice, la pléthore de sujets qui surgissent et disparaissent, l’intensité de son travail – et on y reconnaît l’originalité de son style : sa veine parodique, poétique, sa vivacité et ses jeux de mots. »

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