Nabokov
An excellent piece on Nabokov by Martin Amis in The Guardian. I very much agree with Amis here. Nabokov's genius was like a titanic tropical flower that blossoms opulently before its lurid perfume becomes the stench of self-consumption and it collapses in on itself in a rotten welter of murk and corruption. They should have left Laura alone.
fine words butter no parsnips
This should be in today's Review, so I'll be reading it later. (No gardening today - it's peeing down. A wet and wintry Manx Saturday. I love them.)
I've never read any of Nab's novels - hang on, I tell a lie, I did read Pale Fire years ago, and really enjoyed it, but it's hardly a novel, as I remember, more an extended literary joke.
I have read some of the short stories, which supposedly show him at his best, and even them I wasn't wild about. I thought then - and I might go back and give them another go - that this was self-regarding prose, too ornate, too plush, too pleased with itself, preening itself in the mirrors of a fairly dubious gym.
I've never read any of Nab's novels - hang on, I tell a lie, I did read Pale Fire years ago, and really enjoyed it, but it's hardly a novel, as I remember, more an extended literary joke.
I have read some of the short stories, which supposedly show him at his best, and even them I wasn't wild about. I thought then - and I might go back and give them another go - that this was self-regarding prose, too ornate, too plush, too pleased with itself, preening itself in the mirrors of a fairly dubious gym.