Nabokov's Fifth Arc

In his autobiography Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov compared his life to a spiral, in which twirl follows twirl, and every synthesis is the thesis of the next series. The first four arcs of the spiral of Nabokovs lifehis youth in Russia, voluntary exile in Europe, two decades spent in the United States, and the final years of his life in Switzerlandare now followed by a fifth arc, his continuing life in literary history, which this volume both explores and symbolizes. This is the first collection of essays to examine all five arcs of Nabokovs creative life through close analyses of representative works. The essays cast new light on works both famous and neglected and place these works against the backgrounds of Nabokovs career as a whole and modern literature in general. Nabokov analyzes his own artistry in his Postscript to the Russian Edition of Lolita, presented here in its first English translation, and in his little-known Notes to Ada by Vivian Darkbloom, published now for the first time in America and keyed to the standard U.S. editions of the novel. In addition to a defense of his fathers work by Dmitri Nabokov and a portrait-interview by Alfred Appel, Jr., the volume presents a vast spectrum of critical analyses covering all Nabokovs major novels and several important short stories. The highly original structure of the book and the fresh and often startling revelations of the essays dramatize as never before the unity and richness of Nabokovs unique literary achievement.