Product Description

This first major critical biography of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the greatest of twentieth-century writers, finally allows us full access to the dramatic details of his life and the depths of his art. An intensely private man, Nabokov was uprooted first by the Russian Revolution and then by World War II. Transformed into a permanent wanderer, he did not achieve fame until late in life, with the success of Lolita. In this first of two volumes, Brian Boyd vividly describes the liberal milieu of the aristocratic Nabokovs, their escape from Russia, Nabokov's education at Cambridge, and the murder of his father in Berlin. Boyd then turns to the years that Nabokov spent, impoverished, in Germany and France, until the coming of Hitler forced him to flee, with wife and son, to the United States. This volume stands on its own as a fascinating exploration of Nabokov's Russian years and Russian worlds, prerevolutionary and émigré.

In the course of his ten years' work on the biography, Boyd traveled along Nabokov's trail everywhere from Yalta to Palo Alto. The only scholar to have had free access to the Nabokov archives in Montreux and the Library of Congress, he also interviewed at length Nabokov's family and scores of his friends and associates.

For the general reader, Boyd offers an introduction to Nabokov the man, his works, and his world. For the specialist, he provides a basis for all future research on Nabokov's life and art, as he dates and describes the composition of all Nabokov's works, published and unpublished.

Boyd investigates Nabokov's relation to and his independence from his time, examines the special structures of his mind and thought, and explains the relations between his philosophy and his innovations of literary strategy and style. At the same time he provides succinct introductions to all the fiction, dramas, memoirs, and major verse; presents detailed analyses of the major books that break new ground for the scholar, while providing easy paths into the works for other readers; and shows the relationship between Nabokov's life and the themes and subjects of his art.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #331878 in Books
• Published on: 1993-01-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 619 pages

From Publishers Weekly
These intimate, magisterial, prodigiously researched biographies illuminate the contours of the great author's mind with sensuous precision. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This is the first volume of a detailed critical biography of the Russian-born author of Lolita ( LJ 8/58) and Pale Fire ( LJ 5/15/62). Boyd's analysis of Nabokov's works is bracing, but his summary of the man's life is sometimes infelicitous: "His heart and mind set on love and verse, young Vladimir Nabokov had neither eyes nor ears for the smoke and rumble of history." We last see Nabokov, clearly alive to history by now, fleeing France with his wife and son just ahead of Nazi troops; a second volume, The American Years, is to follow. Boyd's biography supersedes Andrew Field's VN ( LJ 9/1/86), which Boyd and others have criticized as inaccurate. Recommended for collections of modern literature.
- Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Mr. Boyd has a remarkable gift for drawing life and literature together. . . .[What he does] in this impressive biography reveals to us a Nabokov who has been far too little known. . . . As a biography [Boyd's] book can hardly be surpassed. It is a definitive life of the man and a superbly documented chronicle of his time.
(Sergei Davydov The New York Times Book Review )

A terrific biography: intelligent, compulsively readable, indispensable. Brian Boyd brings to his work a passionate scholarship comparable to that in Nabokov's own encyclopedic edition of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. You just can't do better than that.
(Michael Dirada the Washington Post Book World )

To the short list of outstanding literary biographies in our time there must now be added another remarkable achievement. . . . Brian Boyd had a great story to tell, and he has told it superbly.
(Hilton Kramer The Wall Street Journal )

Boyd has many qualities which mark him as Nabokov's natural biographer.
(Jane Grayson The Times Literary Supplement )

Customer Reviews

Probably the definitive Nabokov biography for years to come
The man himself once said, "Biographies are generally fun to write, less fun to read." The implication is that the person who authors the biography becomes so immersed in the life of their subject that biographies end up being labors of love. However, take that biography and assign it to a student...

I would have to say that this two-volume biography of Nabokov is the mathematical proof that disproves the formula above. Boyd plays the role of historian/biographer, spending time explaining the political scene of Russia early on in N's life, and traces the movements of the most significant person in N's first twenty years; his father. Of course, this is probably out of necessity considering his father's position in the whole political mish-mash that was fin-de-siecle Russia. I might gripe and say that there's too much attention paid to the politics, but that's because I'm an English major, not a historian or a politician, and I'm reading for pleasure. Were I reading for a thesis, these excerpts would be invaluable.

I'm thrilled about the chapters of Russian emigre life in Europe following the Bolshevik Revolution. Not only does it trace the influence that wafts through N's early stuff (and follows through his life), but it also gives us a taste of the climate of those years, plus a roster of sorts of who was part of that microcosm. This is going to be, in my estimation, a highly researched period of literature, once it becomes fashionable that is, and this biography will be a resource for all those students looking for a glimpse into that world. Studies in Nabokov are really beginning to blossom, and this will spur interest in that era as well.

N's life is portrayed as an emerging talent, rather than a natural genius who could command language and characters as well at 20 as at 70. This humanizes Nabokov, a figure who can sometimes seem a little god-like to his devotees. Expelling mist and myth is the mark of a good biography, next to joyously reporting the life of the subject. The analysis provided by Boyd in the sections dealing with early literature (such as the comparative criticism of his first novel "Mary" and the story "Return of Chorb") is revealing in this case because he can explain what Nabokov lacks here, or does not do so well early on.

Extensive references and a collection of satisfying photographs complete the package. One of the best photos being a shot of the Rohzdestveno manor that Nabokov inherited from his Uncle Vasily at age 17. A 17 year-old with his own mansion. Can you say harem?

Great book- Even better than Nabokov himself, at times
Having read what little Nabokov anyone has read (Lolita) I exchanged this book for a Bogart biography I received as birthday present. I was hooked and, having read the whole book through in a few days, I bought the second volume and I wasn't let down. The book is a jewel and Nabokov becomes almost as close an acquaintance of the reader as Johnson became per Boswell's book.

The elegiac childhood that Nabokov enjoyed as the son of an upper class family of political liberals and Russian patriots is hard to imagine given the awfulness of Russian history since the 1905. After the death of his grandfather Nabokov became a millionaire at age 10. His family was close knit and loving (which may explain his deep love for his wife Véra and his son Dmitri, named after Vladimir's father). The Nabokovs managed to escape Russia from their Crimean summer house and eventually ended up in Germany, where they endured hardship and persecution. Nabokov's father, who had been an Education Minister during Kerensky's brief democratic administration, was murdered by an extreme-nationalist from the "Black Hundreds", a paramilitary organisation. Amazingly, Nabokov never bored to learn German although he lived in Germany for twenty years because he felt German would destroy his gift for Russian. His French was flawless, though (he died in French Switzerland). His meeting of the beautiful, brilliant Véra is touching, a rare moment of perfection on this cursed globe, and they became a very close couple. Mrs Nabokov was much more than a wife: she was a soul-mate and a loving collaborator in all Nabokov's efforts. Nabokov, in spite of his poverty managed to continue to live with aristocratic non-chalance and was always able to afford extensive and elaborate holidays that nowadays are only possible for the very well-to-do. The book ends as the Nabokovs and young Dmitri move to America, barely escaping France before the German invasion. Better times were yet to come, and they are aptly told in the second volume.

Most of the books Nabokov wrote in this period were in Russian and thus they have not been as widely divulged as his books in English. I can't appreciate their quality, not reading Russian, but Boyd notes many references of experts which regarded them as some of the best writing in Russian in the 20th century, and more deserving of a Nobel prize than either Pasternak or Solzhenitzn.

The title of my review will probably be deplored by many Nabokov fans, but in fact I was deeply attracted to Nabokov's elegance, charm and tolerance, by his revulsion to snobbery (he was always annoyed by some Europeans' disdain for US culture or some Russian emigrés' disgust at the accent of Jewish Russian speakers), by his unerring political sense that led him to distrust most extremisms of the last century (he was one of the few important authors not to have written blatant political nonsense), and very much enjoyed his curious interest in butterflies (his fantasy of a lavish, multi-volume Encyclopedia of butterflies of the Russian Empire smacks of Borges to me), and his extensive work at Harvard concerning them (he does have a species to his name). Boyd's descriptions led to me seek Nabokov's literal translation of Pushkin's epical poem, Eugene Onegin (I found the translation unreadable, as many people have), and, in spite of Boyd's wonderful summaries, I couldn't really get into some of Nabokov' other works in English (Ada or Ardor and Pale Fire I thought too modernist for my taste- his literary criticism was great, although I winced at his evident distaste for Jane Austen- and shared his love for Dickens). But Nabokov is as great a writer as he as a biographer's subject, and Boyd's book is probably the best literary biography after The Life of Johnson. I heartily recommend it (it's great even if you haven't actually read Nabokov).

Brilliant
Both volumes of this set are excellent. This is the way literary biography should be done. It's so good, in fact, that you wouldn't necessarily have to be a huge Nabokov fan to want to read both books. (Of course, I am a diehard Nabokovian, so I raced through them even more eagerly.) Bravo to Brian Boyd.