Tag Archives: Vladimir Nabokov

pale fire: aesthetics of contempt

Vladimir Nabokov and Pale Fire. Much less well known than Lolita and certainly his strangest work… Pale Fire is a tease to the reader, a farcical caricature of scholarship… The sensitive reader dislike being teased, unless it is done with … Continue reading

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pale fire: the big wordy tease

Vladimir Nabokov and Pale Fire. Not his best work, but clearly one of the stranger literary offerings… Like Lolita, it is a study in obsessional insanity and a satire on the European intellectual in America. It is also the reconstruction … Continue reading

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pale fire: study in obsessional insanity

Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Not his best, but one of his strangest… The novel is clearly a little masterpiece of ingenuity. Shade’s poem itself is charming. The gradual self-exposure of Kinbote’s insane mind is skillful. There is even some comic … Continue reading

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hollow laughter

Most fiction pretends to be “real”: while we read, we believe. And the author himself, while he writes, also frequently believes. But there are certain stories that are contrived, and are meant to seem contrived, acting parts in which the … Continue reading

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Chess a genteel game? … full-contact body and mind

Not all chess matches have had a happy, sportsmanlike end.Does chess encourage violence or discourage it? It may not be a leisure activity of refinement and erudition that many outsiders hold the image of it to be. In fact the … Continue reading

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Finding bobby fisher: Back to Iceland?

Maybe the celebrated American chess champion knew something, a secret on the game he never disclosed. On the isle of Lewis on the outer fringe of the Northern Hebrides, the existence of giant chessmen does not go unnoticed. Here, as … Continue reading

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JANE AUSTEN: ESSENTIAL AMBIGUITIES OF THE HEART

…and iron butterflies in the soul. Which “Belle du Jour” to rattle the ghosts in the cage of moral sentiments. Maybe men should get off the couch and take the trouble to find out instead of making virtue out of … Continue reading

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PULLING THE BEARD OF THE KING

“I would say that our patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself! Instead, their despair stems in each instance from a doubt as to whether suffering is meaningful. Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering … Continue reading

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LOST BERLIN:BABYLON & BOOGIE AT THE BRANDENBURG GATE

A macabre gaiety pervaded Berlin like an intoxicating smog. There was no shortageof drink, drugs, or beautiful women. “There are two kinds of places,” wrote a contemporary of Bertolt Brecht, ” those one talks about, and those one doesn’t talk … Continue reading

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BLOOD FLOWERS & HEADS ON THE DOOR

A genre of fiction which first gained popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the epistolary novel is a form in which most or all of the plot is advanced by the letters or journal entries of one or more … Continue reading

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