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Title: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov, Fredson Bowers, John Updike ISBN: 0-15-602775-5 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 16 December, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: you guys are reviewing the wrong book
Comment: just a correction: Nabokov wrote two different books "lectures on literature" and "lectures on Russian literature." most reviewers here are talking about the wrong book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Get the hardcover edition
Comment: As the other reviewers write, this is a great literary companion, especially to Ulysses. Nabokov writes wonderfully. I can imagine that most people would read this book as they read Mansfield Park, Madame Bovary, Bleak House, etc and would flip back and forth. However, my paperback copy was very poorly bound and fell apart. So my advice is get the hardcover edition.
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent
Comment: In his opening lecture, Nabokov says, " ... great novels are great fairy tales -- and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales." The tales discussed are Austen's "Mansfield Park," Dickens' "Bleak House," Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Proust's "The Walk by Swann's Place," Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," and Joyce's "Ulysses." In addition, there are lectures "Good Readers and Good Writers," "The Art of Literature and Commonsense," and "L'Envoi" -- the first being his opening and the last being his closing comments on the course. These are lectures not polished by Nabokov for publication. There is a companion volume on Russian literature.
The examination of the works here is purely literary. The works are examined in minute detail. For example, in "The Metamorphosis," Nabokov goes to some length to determine what insect Gregor became. Not a cockroach, as some suggest, but rather a beetle. And he draws pictures. He wants us to understand the layout of the rooms in the Samsa flat. The devil -- that is, the art -- is in the details. Some might object that there is more to some of these works than is discerned by such a point of view. Granted, but nothing precludes looking elsewhere for (say) a more philosophical treatment of "The Metamorphosis," or God forbid, thinking about it on one's own.
In his closing comments, Nabokov says, "In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys -- literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author -- the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter."
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Title: Strong Opinions by Vladimir Nabokov ISBN: 0679726098 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 17 March, 1990 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by VLADIMIR NABOKOV ISBN: 0679729976 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 December, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Vladimir Nabokov : The American Years by Brian Boyd ISBN: 0691024715 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 11 January, 1993 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Vladimir Nabokov ISBN: 0691019053 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 January, 1991 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Speak, Memory : An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov ISBN: 0679723390 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 August, 1989 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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