Nabokov accomplishes in 5 pages what most writers fail to in thousands. The tales you'll find in this collection run the gamut from ecstatic to devastating, whimsical to grave, often evoking all of these in the same story, on the same page, and sometimes inexplicably seem to ignite the entire sprawling spectrum of humanity with a single turn of phrase! I'm gushing, I know, but this book hit me really hard.

Mạnh dạn cho 5 sao, mặc dù có mấy truyện "trẻ con non choẹt" thế nào ý (Ma cây , Lá thư đến từ nước Nga) :))) Cũng có thể đó là những truyện bác ấy viết hồi mới chập chững cầm bút. Cách miêu tả của Nabokov vừa có được sự mềm mại tự nhiên lại vừa rất chặt chẽ, chi tiết, xoắn xuýt. Những truyện Dấu hiệu và biểu hiện, Báo tin, Một truyện đồng thoại, Cảnh đời một quái vật kép,... khiến mình choáng váng sau khi đọc xong, hệt như khi lỡ ngủ trưa quá 30' - sẽ cực kỳ đau đầu và lâng lâng khi bị dựng cổ dậy @@

After chipping away at this immense thing for something like three goddamn years, I've finally finished this extraordinary collection. This spans Nabokov's entire literary career but, honestly, these are all so consistently wonderful it's hard to periodize them except to say that Nabby is one of the finest craftsman of the short story I've ever read. Scads/lightyears beyond either Lolita or Pale Fire. Nabby was so much better with intimate little tales, almost interruptions. It's hard to even begin to characterize them and probably pointless to. It'd be like a Talmudic scholar trying to convince someone of the spiritual merit of the Old Testament: you just know it's all good.

Ik heb heel erg lang over dit boek gedaan omdat ik soms de verhalen nog even wilde bewaren. Een bundel om lang te lezen, opnieuw te lezen. Ik denk dat hij gewoon op mijn nachtkastje zal blijven liggen.

I'm nearing the end of this tome but already the winner is lengths ahead of the pack. Unless there is a magnificent stumble, the crown is assured. Nearer to the start-- this book contains every story Nabokov ever wrote, no less-- I tingled with a small amount of gloating: some stories did not work! There were minor clunkers... But Nabokov was just beginning to flex his muscles and the ensuing dozens and dozens of glittering prose fists beat me into submission. (They are arranged chronologically, by completion date, not publication date.) Lik, an ill actor who encounters the school bully, as adults, in a sad and decrepit coastal town, and Spring in Fialta, about loving a woman who is married to another man, are alone enough to merit five stars.

The effect of living in such a book for a few months while trying to complete my own, by this time next year, is yet to be seen. I'm humbled and somewhat emasculated by Nabokov's endowments. Granted, there is a slightly dated feel, and a vague, creepy whiff to the characters, but these effects, too, are part of Nabokov's thing. I will read the last few stories with my cap in hand, begging for a paragraph, or even a sentence of such impact and resonance. I should read something really crappy next, to regain my mojo.

One of the stories I liked the most featured a unique take on life imprisonment. Another involved a barber given a chance to shave someone who had tortured him in the past.

i love nabokov. absolutely love his work. his mind fascinates me.

i've re-read this book twice because i missed the stories. you just don't understand how deep my love for his work is.

The summer of 2016 was a Nabokov story a day, imbuing each day with his golden mellifluous magic. Really that is the healthy way to conquer 67 stories by the same author without burning out. Sure, only twenty five of them reach the excellent to great (4-5*'s) status in my book, so perhaps my rating isn't holistic. It helps when the first 3-4 stories you publish are so superb, containing three of my top five favorite Nabokov's: "The Wood Sprite", "Sounds", "Wingstroke". All of the writing is superior, but I find myself pulled to his stories of the fantastic: "La Veneziana", "The Dragon", "A Nursery Tale", "Ultima Thule", and the always exciting supernatural puzzle at the end of "The Vane Sisters". Also monumental are the Chekovian "An Affair of Honor", the Conrad-inspired "Terra Incognita", the augural "Tyrants Destroyed", and the heartbreaking "Lik". Again, there are no bad stories, perhaps at the worst, Nabokov would call dalliances, little bonbons, while the others are impressionistic exercises, interesting character studies, or veiled etudes in memoir. I would of thought from reading "The Vane Sisters" in anthologies that Nabokov hit his short story stride in English later in his life, but I found almost the opposite to be true with all the wonderful Russian stories from the twenties. I posture that Nabokov was more intent on the novel form in America.

I began both reading and listening. This should say something about the way I 'process information' -- having literature (anything, really) read to me sticks more with me. Certainly material long and intricate. It's not strange, then, that the reading was abandoned in favor of the listening, in my car, over a period of a couple of months.

At first even that was problematic. Nabokov's style is dense, convoluted, and it seemed as I listened-on, almost overly-rich with detail. It was, day after day, a lesson in close writing, in exquisite elaboration, and I thought I might quit it, as one gets advised to thin out a diet, remove the chocolate and the liqueurs.

But somewhere into the third or fourth or fifth story on, it shot clear through that VN was not toying with me. He was not being 'cute', but sliding violin tones by my ear in musical pieces of profound structure and human seriousness.

These are translations by his son overseen, and some done, by him, along with a few written in English. For the most part, what these tell are emigre tales of Russians escaping the tyranny of the USSR as it was forming, people living in Germany and France, all with vulnerabilities and desperation and in differing situations.

Life is a hazard. People are fools. Many lose. In living it, meaning is found and it is made, and it fills you to the breaking.

đọc câu trước thì quên câu sau.
Không ít lần phải đọc lại tiêu đề truyện để xem mình đang đọc gì T_T
Hình như lỗi tại người đọc.

My favourite short stories:

Beneficence
La Veneziana
The Passenger
An Affair of Honour
The Potato Elf
Lips to Lips
Perfection
The Admiralty Spire
Breaking the News
A Slice of Life
Spring in Fialta
Tyrants Destroyed
Lik
Mademoiselle O
Ultima Thule
Solus Rex
Conversation Piece, 1945
Signs and Symbols
First Love
The Vane Sisters

Ruth Bader Ginsberg had Nabakov as an English professor at Cornell. Had to have been before Lolita, because he quit teaching and moved out of the country after Lolita’s success.

Amy Tan chose “Lolita “ as her one book
to read stuck on a desert island.

I read the 10 “best” short stories, as a Lolita warm up, plus “The Vane Sisters” recommended by
Harold Bloomberg.

The stories cover dark human undersides, reminiscent of Carson McCullers. Could read one short story as a daily or weekly vocabulary builder.