Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years

Vol 2 of a great biog of Nabokov, my favorite writer. A doorstopper of a book!

Such a great second part of the biography of such an interesting man. The American Years time frame was the more interesting part of his life, and the one that birthed my favorite books. He inspires me to learn, watch, and appreciate.

"In art as in science there is no delight without the detail, and it is on details that I have tried to fix the readers attention. Let me repeat that unless these are thoroughly understood and remembered, all 'general ideas' (so easily acquired, so profitably resold) must necessarily remain but worn passports allowing their bearers shortcuts from one area of ignorance to another." VN -pg 340.

As if Boyd is Nabokov's propagandist. The research is good but the analysis is poor

Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years continues where The Russian Years leaves off, with Russian-American literary giant Nabokov moving to the U.S., settling down as best he could and trying to make a name for himself. The famous author of Lolita spent the second half developing his writing and his reputation like no other writer of the 20th century, and author Brian Boyd adeptly tells his story in a way that honors and pays homage to him. This volume, coupled with the biography of Nabokov's years in Russia and in Europe, is a fantastic and enlightening look into one of my favorite authors, and I was enthralled the entire way through.

Boyd presents fascinating anecdotes and recollections from Nabokov's students, friends and family that provided such an additional insight into his life, beyond his reputation as an aloof, haughty old man—although his reputation for being snobby shatters a bit when you realize the reason he refused to do grant live interviews was really because he felt so mortified and ashamed of his performances. That Nabokov is a man most literary enthusiasts are not familiar with, and even I, though I've read many of Nabokov's own books and analysis of them, was warmed by Boyd's depiction of Nabokov as a friendly and charming man despite his fame in later life. The personal biographical details in this book were delightful, and I wished there were more, although I know the Nabokovs were famously private (thus the reputation Nabokov earned as not being friendly). But the balance between personal and professional stories that Boyd spins here are fantastic to understand the man behind the novels.

Lolita, Pale Fire and Speak, Memory all rank among my all-time favorite books, and the more I read about them in this volume of Nabokov's life, once it was clear he had developed into the best writing shape of his life, the more I appreciated every little thing about them. Boyd's analysis made me yearn to read the books again after too long away from them.

I was pleased with the much more manageable level of literary analysis presented in The American Years compared with this book's predecessor. While Boyd devotes whole chapters to books in this volume as well, he also spends much more time discussing Nabokov's devotion to writing in his post-Lolita years, when he had more time to other projects besides simply writing for the sake of an income. Understanding the struggles that Nabokov went through—not even mentioning the strife he and his family faced for decades after leaving Russia—paints such a more vibrant picture of his life that Boyd weaved into his analysis of Nabokov's books and why certain inclusions were made. More than any other biography I've read on Nabokov, Boyd's made all the puzzle pieces fit.

I was quite speechless at several points while reading The American Years, including after I'd finished writing it, knowing that the fantastic tomes I'd read on Nabokov had come to an end. I commend Boyd for taking on such monumental subject for a pair of biographies, and I encourage every Nabokov fan to read them and gain even more appreciation for Nabokov himself.

From a Transcript of a Review Read Aloud to the Lovely Ladies of a Local Literary Salon
A tour de force. Anecdotal astonishments abound. Tasty tidbits include a look at Nabokov's distaste for finding himself the keeper of a page-a-day daily diary. Laugh yourself silly at the amazing marvel of the dwarf in the snow. His macho confrontation of the husband of Shirley Jackson at one of those college professor mixers (spoiler: it boiled down to Vlad puffing up to Stanley and saying, "You said what about my father?") See how Nabokov spent the second half of his life translating the works from the first half of his life (he took what he wrote in his own words, his dream language of Russian, and rewrote it in his own words, the adopted lullaby dream gibberish of English). If you won't remove yourself from the lecture hall, I'll have you removed if I have to do it myself. Now, where were we? Questions of time bubble like champagne in the brain of Nabokov. His expatriate characters always in a quest for self-erasure whether disappearing across borders or stepping in front of trains: a reflection of the man, a hunted look in his eyes, fleeing Berlin with wife and child in tow. Not to mention (but to mention), from the Truth is No Stranger to Fiction File, the crazed fan, the twisted translator of Pale Fire who put a kaput to her literary future by festering up the fair-faced text with new and unusual Kinboticisms. It had the riddle and rhyme of a horror movie medical mystery: the transplant operation of a more diseased appendix into an otherwise healthy patient.

If any book deserves five stars, it is this one. It tells the continued story of Vladimir Nabokov and his family, as they begin their lives in North America after decades of evading one despotic government after another (Russia, Nazi Germany). In volume one, Boyd takes Nabokov all the way from birth to the year 1940, when he and his family, by a matter of weeks, escape the Nazi invasion of France. For years, Nabokov has had his eye on America as a safe place in which to write literature. And he found it. But not immediately. He has to live in penury first, flitting from one part-time teaching job to another, until finally he lands a full time position at Cornell in Ithaca, New York. It is here that he writes his controversial novel Lolita, which catapults him into worldwide fame. Boyd does an apt job describing all the struggles that Nabokov and Vera underwent, never having a place to call their own, moving from one rental house to another.

I like biographies because I always come out smarter than I was prior to reading them. By the end of this book, I could describe the Bolshevik Revolution to a stranger, if called upon to do so. I could say a few things about butterfly collecting, the complex structures of novels; I could speak briefly on such writers as Pushkin, Marina Tsvetaeva, Bunin, Lemertov, Edmund Wilson, Simon Karlinsky, and of course, Vladimir Nabokov himself. I could describe several vacation resorts in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and trace the route that Vladimir and his family took while hunting butterflies in the American west.

The only sections of the book in which I got bogged down were Boyd’s critical reviews of Nabokov’s works. They were astute, but they seemed to go on relentlessly. Just when my head is pulsing with fatigue, I am disconcerted when I see many more pages to go until that glorious white space signaling the end of the chapter. Now, If I had read Nabokov’s books before reading the biography, I might have felt differently, but I came to Boyd’s reviews cold and unprepared. It seemed to me that Boyd could easily have cut these reviews straight from his Ph. D thesis and pasted them in the manuscript of this biography. Despite their being the very antithesis of brevity, I can still sproclaim my 5-star enthusiasm for the biography.

I did read Boyd concurrently with Vera, Stacy Schiff’s biography of Vladimir’s devoted wife and business partner. It was good, even winning the Pulitzer prize, but nowhere near Boyd’s. Schiff added nuances that Boyd doesn’t touch; while Boyd puts the lion’s share of his attention on Vladimir, in his book, Vera appears as a two-dimensional cardboard character. Schiff brings her to life, makes her a living, breathing woman. Reading the two books together added that third dimension that made my experience as a reader synergistic.

Boyd is clearly a big fan of Nabokov; his prose is dripping with praise, but—to his credit--he isn’t afraid of downvoting some of his novels and stories, explaining why they don’t work well. Moreover, Boyd’s feelings toward Andrew Field, Nabokov’s first biographer, are plainly evident. There is clear disdain. Boyd showcases Field’s flaws, his refusal to cooperate, and spends several pages on his eventual estrangement from the Nabokovs.

I can’t praise this biography enough. It will not be donated to the thrift store but will be placed at eye-level on my bookshelf as a sort of trophy for the six weeks it took me to read it. If you call yourself a fan of Nabokov, you’ve probably already read it; if not, get it. Now.

It was good. A series of successes is less interesting to me than the struggle, so I enjoyed the first volume, and the first half of this volume more than the second half.

Excellent descriptions/analysis of VN's works. Even if you don't want to read all the biographical details.