Reading through Nabokovs collected stories in chronological order - TopicsExpress



          

Reading through Nabokovs collected stories in chronological order is such an enlightening experience. He starts out as basically a 19th-century writer with a greater flare for lyric turns of phrase, goes through his idiosyncratic version of modernism, and then begins helping invent post-modernism. And its interesting how many of his short stories are political, whereas he largely claimed to be apolitical. It is also striking how much he and Stefan Zweig have in common -- both had to leave their homes due to dictatorial regimes, both wrote regularly about the past with nostalgia, and both were polyglots who did tons of translation as well as studies of major world literary figures. The key difference, aside from prose style (which isnt actually all that different in the short fiction), is that Nabokov seems to be innately happy, while Zweig is innately melancholic.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 18:27:51 +0000

Trending Topics



Recently Viewed Topics




© 2015