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Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited
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Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.17
You Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
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Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679723394
ISBN: 0679723390
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 336
Publication Date: 1989-08-28
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1989-08-28
Studio: Vintage
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679723394
ISBN: 0679723390
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 336
Publication Date: 1989-08-28
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1989-08-28
Studio: Vintage
Editorial Review of Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited
The late Vladimir Nabokov always did things his way, and his classic autobiography is no exception. No dry recital of dates, names, and addresses for this linguistic magician--instead, Speak, Memory is a succession of lapidary episodes, in which the factoids play second fiddle to the development of Nabokov's sensibility. There is, to be sure, an impressionistic whirl through the author's family history (including a gallery of Tartar princes and fin-de-siècle oddities). And Nabokov's account of his tenure at St. Petersburg's famous Tenishev School--where he counted Osip Mandelstam among his schoolmates--offers a lovely glimpse into the heart of Russia's silver age. Still, Nabokov is much too artful an autobiographer to present Speak, Memory as a slice of reality--a word, by the way, that he insisted must always be surrounded by quotation marks.
Customer Reviews of Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited
Customer Rating: 
Review Summary: Memory Well Spoken
Review: 3 starts for "I liked it" --
Thought not the best of the stories I've read (literary-autobiography-wise, nothing I've read surpasses Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles), this charming, rather haphazardly collated collection of Nabokov's autobiographical episodes is certainly worth reading for its breathtaking prose, unique and incisive ruminations on various subjects, and revealing, behind-the-scenes vignettes and thoughts of one of the most fascinating writers of the 20th century.
The only major misgiving I had was the bland, woolgathering reveries I had to trudge through. But then there are these passages that soar into the Unreal and leave me gasping for breath. From the very first sentence ( "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness"), Nabokov proves himself again and again to be the master prose stylist that he was. Just read this description of the moon:
So there it comes, steering out of a flock of small dappled clouds, which it tinges with a vague iridescence; and, as it sails higher, it glazes the runner tracks left on the road, where every sparkling lump of snow is emphasized by a swollen shadow (p.99).
In these instances, I simply must surrender, prostrate, to Nabokov with my humble hat off. I was also pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing over some of the vignettes (esp. in Chapter 6). Take, for example, this one:
One summer afternoon, in 1911, Mademoiselle [my favorite along with Nabokov's father] came into my room, book in hand, started to say she wanted to show me how wittily Rousseau denounced zoology (in favor of botany), and by then was too far gone in the gravitational process of lowering her bulk into an armchair to be stopped by my howl of anguish: on that seat I had happened to leave a glass-lidded cabinet tray with long, lovely series of the Large White. Her first reaction was one of stung vanity: her weight, surely, could not be accused of damaging what in fact it had demolished; her second was to console me: Allons donc, ce ne sont que des papillons de potager! - which only made matters worse. (127)
Funny, incisive, and lyrical, the book is a great read especially if you're a writer. Like some reviewer has written, "time with Nabokov is invariably time well spent." And it is true. He shows us the secret passageways and hidden nooks of the English language that other writers have completely overlooked. Although the book lacks unity and there are episodes I couldn't care less about, it is simply delightful to follow his prose, stumble over obscure charming words, and be surprised, accompanied by that guttural groan of awe and satisfaction at witnessing the magician of words at work.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Place of Consciousness
Review: Reading this literary whirlwind is somewhat of a harsh inside joke, one that I happen to get and enjoy. He follows some of his motifs and images that he uses in his other novels (the window pencil, cyclical time, etcetera) to make the reader realize that by reading this memoir, the reader has come to know Nabokov less on page 310 than before on page 1! You have to find Nabokov in this book, and those who complain about tediousness and fortress enigmas--those should sigh and let Nabokov set and collect dust on their bookshelf.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Superlative autobiography
Review: I avoid reading autobiographies because so many authors fall on their faces when describing the defining qualities of their lives, in a manner that is interesting to an outsider. Nabokov is an exception: Everything he wrote about felt seemed so close and warm in the memory. He captured both the quintessence of the innocence of youth and the trials of growing up in a turbulent nation. This is one of the only books that I ever read where I was not sated in the end: Just a few more Nabokovian pages of literary richness, please.
As an aside, I loved his description of the "salvo" a chair would make when his zaftig governess (or was it his tutor?) sat down. It forever changed the way I perceive people, myself included, when they sit down. But anyway.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Cultured Discourse
Review: In Speak, Memory, Nabokov, who is known for crafting memorable sentences in his novels, attempts to apply his abilities to a story that mirrors all the elegance of the New York telephone directory. And he comes up short.
If you open the book to any page, you are likely to recognize his rich writing style:
"This final dachshund followed us into exile, and as late as 1930, in a suburb of Prague (where my widowed mother spent her last years on a small pension provided by the Czech government), he could still be seen going for reluctant walks with his mistress, waddling far behind in a huff, tremendously old and furious with his long Czech muzzle of wire - an émigré dog in a patched and ill-fitting coat."
But you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Two stars for effort.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bewitching.
Review: Personally, I like everything Nabokov did if only because reading him makes me a better writer. He is a "master stylist" cut from the cloth of James Joyce (in terms of his innovation and talent) who challenges his audience at every turn. When devouring his fiction, I am sure that there are many things I miss due to my being no great genius of literary analysis, but time with Nabokov is invariably time well spent. I make a point of circling those lines and turns of phrase which are strikingly original in the hopes that my own skills improve via his brilliant examples. I do the same thing with vocabulary words which was particularly the case with Speak, Memory as I bracketed off those terms with which I am not familiar. Thus, it seems that studying Nabokov is an essential tutorial for the aspiring writer. This, his autobiography, is absolutely charming and easily accessible for those readers intimidated by his other works. The author describes his early life in Russia--and vicariously, life in Tsarist Russia in general--and provides us with a captivating history of his family. Unfortunately, I found that it ended too soon. I longed for another 200 pages so his development as a novelist could be more fully explored. Nabokov, like so many writers, appears to have been the quintessential introvert and his environmental struggles are quite compelling. This is an astounding work that should be consulted repeatedly.
Review Summary: Memory Well Spoken
Review: 3 starts for "I liked it" --
Thought not the best of the stories I've read (literary-autobiography-wise, nothing I've read surpasses Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles), this charming, rather haphazardly collated collection of Nabokov's autobiographical episodes is certainly worth reading for its breathtaking prose, unique and incisive ruminations on various subjects, and revealing, behind-the-scenes vignettes and thoughts of one of the most fascinating writers of the 20th century.
The only major misgiving I had was the bland, woolgathering reveries I had to trudge through. But then there are these passages that soar into the Unreal and leave me gasping for breath. From the very first sentence ( "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness"), Nabokov proves himself again and again to be the master prose stylist that he was. Just read this description of the moon:
So there it comes, steering out of a flock of small dappled clouds, which it tinges with a vague iridescence; and, as it sails higher, it glazes the runner tracks left on the road, where every sparkling lump of snow is emphasized by a swollen shadow (p.99).
In these instances, I simply must surrender, prostrate, to Nabokov with my humble hat off. I was also pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing over some of the vignettes (esp. in Chapter 6). Take, for example, this one:
One summer afternoon, in 1911, Mademoiselle [my favorite along with Nabokov's father] came into my room, book in hand, started to say she wanted to show me how wittily Rousseau denounced zoology (in favor of botany), and by then was too far gone in the gravitational process of lowering her bulk into an armchair to be stopped by my howl of anguish: on that seat I had happened to leave a glass-lidded cabinet tray with long, lovely series of the Large White. Her first reaction was one of stung vanity: her weight, surely, could not be accused of damaging what in fact it had demolished; her second was to console me: Allons donc, ce ne sont que des papillons de potager! - which only made matters worse. (127)
Funny, incisive, and lyrical, the book is a great read especially if you're a writer. Like some reviewer has written, "time with Nabokov is invariably time well spent." And it is true. He shows us the secret passageways and hidden nooks of the English language that other writers have completely overlooked. Although the book lacks unity and there are episodes I couldn't care less about, it is simply delightful to follow his prose, stumble over obscure charming words, and be surprised, accompanied by that guttural groan of awe and satisfaction at witnessing the magician of words at work.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Place of Consciousness
Review: Reading this literary whirlwind is somewhat of a harsh inside joke, one that I happen to get and enjoy. He follows some of his motifs and images that he uses in his other novels (the window pencil, cyclical time, etcetera) to make the reader realize that by reading this memoir, the reader has come to know Nabokov less on page 310 than before on page 1! You have to find Nabokov in this book, and those who complain about tediousness and fortress enigmas--those should sigh and let Nabokov set and collect dust on their bookshelf.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Superlative autobiography
Review: I avoid reading autobiographies because so many authors fall on their faces when describing the defining qualities of their lives, in a manner that is interesting to an outsider. Nabokov is an exception: Everything he wrote about felt seemed so close and warm in the memory. He captured both the quintessence of the innocence of youth and the trials of growing up in a turbulent nation. This is one of the only books that I ever read where I was not sated in the end: Just a few more Nabokovian pages of literary richness, please.
As an aside, I loved his description of the "salvo" a chair would make when his zaftig governess (or was it his tutor?) sat down. It forever changed the way I perceive people, myself included, when they sit down. But anyway.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Cultured Discourse
Review: In Speak, Memory, Nabokov, who is known for crafting memorable sentences in his novels, attempts to apply his abilities to a story that mirrors all the elegance of the New York telephone directory. And he comes up short.
If you open the book to any page, you are likely to recognize his rich writing style:
"This final dachshund followed us into exile, and as late as 1930, in a suburb of Prague (where my widowed mother spent her last years on a small pension provided by the Czech government), he could still be seen going for reluctant walks with his mistress, waddling far behind in a huff, tremendously old and furious with his long Czech muzzle of wire - an émigré dog in a patched and ill-fitting coat."
But you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Two stars for effort.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bewitching.
Review: Personally, I like everything Nabokov did if only because reading him makes me a better writer. He is a "master stylist" cut from the cloth of James Joyce (in terms of his innovation and talent) who challenges his audience at every turn. When devouring his fiction, I am sure that there are many things I miss due to my being no great genius of literary analysis, but time with Nabokov is invariably time well spent. I make a point of circling those lines and turns of phrase which are strikingly original in the hopes that my own skills improve via his brilliant examples. I do the same thing with vocabulary words which was particularly the case with Speak, Memory as I bracketed off those terms with which I am not familiar. Thus, it seems that studying Nabokov is an essential tutorial for the aspiring writer. This, his autobiography, is absolutely charming and easily accessible for those readers intimidated by his other works. The author describes his early life in Russia--and vicariously, life in Tsarist Russia in general--and provides us with a captivating history of his family. Unfortunately, I found that it ended too soon. I longed for another 200 pages so his development as a novelist could be more fully explored. Nabokov, like so many writers, appears to have been the quintessential introvert and his environmental struggles are quite compelling. This is an astounding work that should be consulted repeatedly.