Paul

A few posts back Correct that! VN's father spent 3 months in jail (only!) for opposing the Tsar, not 1 1/2 years. That seems really mild. Another benefit of re-reading: Catching errors. /sigh/

Dogmatix, Have no fear! The "slower" is taking care of itself quite nicely here, at least, as I get completely absorbed in the writing and can't speed ahead. His descriptions are beautiful to read, and then reread and visualize. I am really quite taken by the book and overjoyed to see another person joining in. Welcome, if I may say. And Pontalba, many thanks for the link. I'll get to it in the daylight when I am a little more awake here. Now it is back to bed.

The "his/he" in that quote referrs to VN's father.Plus the time was the summer of 1905...Nabokov was born in April of 1899. Pontalba, I was also struck by the other fact about 1905, actually 1906, and his father. Namely that his father was jailed for organizing a protest against the Tsar when the latter illegally dissolved the Parliament. I don't know much about the politics or Government of the period but maybe his father was lucky to escape with his life and (only!) 1 1/2 years in jail. In any event, here was young Nabokov becoming aware of the political events of 1905-6, then being squeezed out of Russia into Germany by the Russian Revolution, and then being squeezed further to France and eventually to the United States by the rise of Hitler. Vladimir Nabokov, in his own person, was a direct witness to momentous events in Eurpoean history, beginning right in chapter 1 of Speak, Memory. It's almost a wonder to me he didn't go into politics, but fortunate for literature that he didn't. In fact, it may be lucky that he escaped with his own life through all of that turmoil.

Hi muggle not! A dozen pages in still puts you ahead of me by about a dozen pages! /groan/ But I hope it means that the housing problems you mentioned earlier have gone away, so that now you have time for reading and relaxing. Every time I have moved, everything has been up in the air forever after it seemed.

Pontalba, That really sounds like a thought I'll remember! But meanwhile I'm still trying to make the time to get into the front of this one. Today it shall happen! I hope muggle_not is someplace ahead of me in the reading? /listens for echo /

Wow, Pontalba! Not there yet, but what a quote -- the final one! That certainly suggests that he was a very deep thinker about life, and a very astute observer to remember and notice such connections. :shock: Boyd in the Introduction puts it this way: It looks like you found a perfect example of that. And it is factual not imaginary!

No renewals allowed by your meanie old librarian? :? Sounds like I better get to chapter one in a hurry then. Or else you alls just plow on ahead, and I'll follow along.

Well, bright and early, day one of the new week, and page 1 para 1 of Speak Memory. Page 1, that is, of the Introduction to the 1999 Hardcover Everyman Edition, which is something I don't ordinarily read, but it turns out the Introduction is interesting. For a freebie we get Boyd's opinion of Nabokov's four best novels out of all those he wrote: The Gift, Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada. I had often wondered. And we also find Boyd saying that Speak Memory is the "most artistic" of the famous autobiographies that have been written and a masterpiece fully equivalent to those four great novels. He restrains himself from calling it "the best" autobiography ever written only because, with admirable restraint, he recognizes that "best" can be very much a matter of personal opinion and how one looks at things. A different critic did, however, call Speak Memory "her book of the century." So it sounds like a truly momentous book in front of us A little later on, Boyd discusses how the book is arrayed into more or less chronological individual chapters on separate topics, but that the narration will not be chronological. Instead the narration will flow back and forth in time as Nabokov's and our own memories do, so it sounds like we will be reading something not only momentous but also having a fascinating style. And then, almost as a reward for reading the Introduction, something I usually skip as boring, there is an excerpted description in Nabokov's own words of his own Frst Love, which we will get to later in the book. A wonderful early treat! I now see that, unfortunately, the Vintage Edition does not have Boyd's Introduction, so perhaps I can continue to include exceprts as we go along, if not everyone has the hardcover. It sounds like an absorbing story of Nabokov's life ahead.

Didn't get lost in the shuffle. YAY. I'm still in. Will get started after the weekend.

I absolutely will not read any book by any political figure of any stripe. And nowadays not any book by any TV personality either. (Ooh, it feels good to get that off my chest! )