Speak, Memory (Everyman's Library)
by Vladimir Nabokov, Brian Boyd
List Price:
Our Price: $12.62
You Save: $8.38 (40%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $10.61 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Brian Boyd, Vladimir NabokovEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-03-23
ISBN: 0375405534
Number of pages: 344
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Book Reviews of Speak, Memory (Everyman's Library)
Book Review: Nabokov on Himself
Summary: 5 Stars
After finishing Nabokov's autobiography, one can't help but contemplate on the nature of the autobiography itself. Usually, they are written by influential or well-known personalities--statesmen, generals, presidents, entertainers--who attempt to shed clarity on the controversial or newsworthy events of their time. Although Nabokov lived through tumultuous events--Lenin's takeover of Russia; Hitler's rise to power--his autobiography only mentions these events in passing. What he is mostly concerned with is his life; those things and those people, large and small, that were important to him. If for no other reason than that Nabokov remains one of the greatest writers of the English language ever, this autobiography would be essential. What is more interesting is that this autobiography would have been fascinating had Nabokov been a mediocrity.
The title of the novel has to do not only with the act of remembering the details of his life, but also extricating the truth of them from the way he made use of these memories in his works of literature. Once they are in written form, he once remarked, the memory becomes the written word. His occasional discussions of this are touching. After describing a set of colored pencils he had as a boy, he states that, "Alas, these pencils, too, have been distributed among the characters in my books to keep fictitious children busy; they are not quite my own now . . . Few things are left, many have been squandered."
In his novels and especially in his short stories, Nabokov made abundantly evident the love he had for his native Russia. Here, we get to hear of him speak of this directly. The Nabokovs were a wealthy family and owned both a large home in St. Petersburg and a country estate, Vyra, which was about thirty miles south. Although fond of St. Petersburg, it is the country estate that he particularly loved, (comparing its climate to that of the higher altitudes of Colorado), and he describes in detail horseback riding and various other outdoor entertainments.
Nabakov, from a very early age, was fascinated by butterflies and was an avid collector throughout his life. (To this day, several of his collections reside in American museums.) There is a particularly lovely scene early on. At the age of about ten, wandering through and beyond his estate in pursuit of his elusive prey, and after passing indifferent "swimming peasant girls, who, stark naked in shallow water, romped and yelled," came upon a bog he had only dreamed of, a haven for butterflies. "Over the small shrubs of bog bilberry with fruit of dim, dreamy blue, over the brown eye of stagnant water, over moss and mire, over the flower spikes of the fragrant bog orchid . . . a dusky little Fritillary bearing the name of a Norse goddess passed in low, skimming flight." And he finds many more of the colorful, fragrant beauties. Nabokov, an agnostic, nevertheless comments that finding this place was, "ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy, something else . . . a sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern--to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal."
Of course, as in all lives, human beings play a large part in Nabokov's, and we get their stories as well. As expected, he dwells quite a bit on his loving, doting mother; his aristocratic father; and his brothers and sisters. But interestingly, he also spends a great deal of time on the lesser personalities as well, such as the family's servants and his tutors. In fact, he devotes an entire chapter to his French tutor, the famous Mademoiselle O. Ill-tempered, middle-aged, overweight, hard-of-hearing, and sensitive to a fault: there was really nothing special about this person's life. Yet her life was special to the observant and sympathetic Nabokov, and his discussion of her time with them and her foibles emerges poignant and, yes, memorable. (This chapter was published as a short story and can be found in at least two of his collections.)
As mentioned, the Nabokov family was extraordinarily wealthy by anyone's standards. Nabokov himself inherited his bachelor uncle's neighboring country estate and a sum of money that he calculated to be about three million (in 1966) American dollars at the age of eighteen. The year though, was 1917, and very shortly after, the Nabokovs were forced to flee for their lives from the Bolsheviks. What is remarkable about this is that Nabokov is never apologetic or appears uncomfortable with this wealth; at the same time, he never expresses any bitterness or anger that it was taken from him. He discusses these things simply as facts of his life.
But again, he is quite poignant about leaving mother Russia itself. After a dangerous flight from St. Petersburg, the family traveled to the Crimea, which at that time was still under the control of free Russians. His love interest, Tamara, had fled to Ukraine, and they regularly corresponded with one another. But suddenly and unexpectedly the Nabokovs' sixteen month stay ended, and they hastily fled the Crimea on a Greek trading vessel, under sporadic Soviet machine gun fire from the shore. He was leaving his Russia, and the sense of it, "was totally eclipsed by the agonizing thought that, Reds or no Reds, letters from Tamara would still be coming, miraculously and needlessly, to southern Crimea, and would search there for a fugitive addressee, and weakly flap about like bewildered butterflies set loose in an alien zone, at the wrong altitude, among unfamiliar flora."
There is so much, so much more: his brief fling as a bad poet, his studies in England, his stay in Berlin with the large community of Russian expatriates. Above all, there are his illuminative and charming comments on it all; and innermost, complex thoughts. In the end, we are left with an indelible portrait of a man; in Nabokov's case an artistic, learned and intelligent man; a man with no hint of condescension or arrogance; and a man who more than anything else displays a huge human heart. This picture, this remembrance of Nabokov, is what sticks in the mind, and is in truth the purpose of autobiography. This one is sublime.
Summary of Speak, Memory (Everyman's Library)
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman's Library edition includes, for the first time, the previously unpublished "Chapter 16"?the most significant unpublished piece of writing by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate?which provided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory.
Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.
Even if you already own Nabokov's earthy, otherworldly account of his astounding life, you must buy this 1999 edition. And if you've never read Speak, Memory, you must do so at once. This volume is essential because it includes the unpublished last chapter, a pseudo-review comparing Speak, Memory with another, nonexistent memoir called When Lilacs Last. (That title refers to Whitman's poem on Lincoln's assassination and to the lilacs of Nabokov's childhood home) Chapter 16 is a key to what the imaginary reviewer accurately calls a "unique freak as autobiographies go," revealing its novel-like nature and unifying themes and images (chess, puzzles, spirals, jewels, rainbows, exile, the stained-glass shadow patterns that the future casts on the present). Maybe Nabokov thought he gave too much away, and one sees the formal superiority of ending the book with chapter 15. But the added essay is a gem that dazzles and illuminates.
You have to consult biographies like Brian Boyd's for the full, remarkable facts of Nabokov's life. A millionaire at 17 (his sister danced in Diaghilev gowns with Fabergé gems at the Winter Palace), repeatedly exiled, forced to bust out of one chrysalis after another into new lives, the writer retained only the infinite wealth of his memory and art. This book is a mosaic shaped by a mind so metaphorical that, as a babe, Nabokov perceived letters as colors, the alphabet as a rainbow.
The loss of his father is at Speak, Memory's core. This memoir is worth owning for a single paragraph alone, about the sight of Nabokov senior being tossed aloft by grateful peasants he'd been generous to--a dozen or so with locked arms flinging him up in a hip-hip-hooray ritual.
There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind-rippled white summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawled in midair.... Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up ... and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin.Nabokov recaptures the paradise of his youth, and acquits himself of the coldness of which some accuse him. He plays literary games, but he plays for keeps. --Tim Appelo
Authors Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Authors Books
Bloomsbury Recalledby Quentin Bell
Columbia University Press; Published: 1997-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.40
Price in other shops:
William Tyndale: A Biographyby David Daniell
Yale University Press; Published: 1994-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.92
Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish Americaby Kathleen Ann Myers
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops:
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)by Ernst Jünger
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Lifeby C.S. Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 1995-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.22
Price in other shops:
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library)by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.65
Price in other shops:
Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98by George Dawson, Richard Glaubman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.55
Price in other shops:
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)by Bill Bryson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
The Professor and the Madman CDby Simon Winchester
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $8.47
Price in other shops:
Alexander Hamilton: A Lifeby Willard Sterne Randall
Harper; Published: 2003-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.86
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Transparent Thingsby Vladimir Nabokov
Vintage; Published: 1989-10-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.17
Price in other shops:
Look at the Harlequins!by Vladimir Nabokov
Vintage; Published: 1990-06-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.47
Price in other shops:
The Luzhin Defenseby Vladimir Nabokov
Vintage; Published: 1990-08-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.16
Price in other shops:
Invitation to a Beheadingby Vladimir Nabokov
Vintage; Published: 1989-09-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.19
Price in other shops:
The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updatedby Vladimir Nabokov, Alfred Appel Jr.
Vintage; Published: 1991-04-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.47
Price in other shops:
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (New Directions Paperbook)by Vladimir Nabokov
New Directions; Published: 2008-07-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.82
Price in other shops:
Lectures on Literatureby Vladimir Nabokov
Mariner Books; Published: 2002-12-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.24
Price in other shops:
Pnin (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)by Vladimir Nabokov
Everyman's Library; Published: 2004-04-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.85
Price in other shops:
Pale Fire (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)by Vladimir Nabokov
Everyman's Library; Published: 1992-03-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.73
Price in other shops:
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokovby Vladimir Nabokov
Vintage; Published: 1996-12-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops: