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Strong Opinions
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Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Vintage
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Our Price: $10.88
You Save: $ 5.12 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
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Strong Opinions Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679726098
ISBN: 0679726098
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 368
Publication Date: 1990-03-17
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1990-03-17
Studio: Vintage
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679726098
ISBN: 0679726098
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 368
Publication Date: 1990-03-17
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1990-03-17
Studio: Vintage
Editorial Review of Strong Opinions
In this collection of interviews, articles, and editorials, Nabokov ranges over his life, art, education, politics, literature, movies, and modern times, among other subjects. Strong Opinions offers his trenchant, witty, and always engaging views on everything from the Russian Revolution to the correct pronunciation of Lolita.
Customer Reviews of Strong Opinions
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Nabokov at leisure
Review: A wonderful collection of Nabokov's views on matters he did not enlarge upon in his fiction, due to the tight aesthetic constraints he placed on that art. The result is a kind of, "Nabokov at leisure" (however, see below) where he holds forth with magnificent wit and insight on everything from swimming pools to tennis, hilariously demolishes several negative reviews of his work, offers the reader a peek into his writing methods and work ethic, rebuffs many a question with scathing repartee that will have you giving vent to rather inelegant guffaws--and on it goes, page after scintillating page.
A certain eccentricity of Nabokov's is worth mentioning here, because it has a direct bearing on this book. Nabokov loftily refused to sit for "chatty" interviews, instead demanding each question in writing, in advance, in response to which, on the day of the interview, (even when he appeared on TV: see YouTube!) he would read his carefully composed reply. This quaint foible (a measure of the importance he placed on words and self-presentation) results in a superbly crafted read, where the questions are often of a pedestrian sort that, put to Nabokov, become fascinating ("How do you spend your day?") followed by answers in his characteristically virtuosic prose style.
I thoroughly recommend this book!
A final thought. Some reviewers have made much of Nabokov's vituperation of esteemed writers, even going so far as to claim that his arrogance has put them off his writing. At first blush, the criticism seems justified--indeed, other than Gogol and Pushkin, one gets the impression that the man has not read a single writer that he tolerates, let alone likes. But this is a mistake, and the scorn is not to be taken too literally.
Nabokov pillories authors in one place only to very quietly praise them in another. For example, he accuses Borges of writing, "pretentious fairy tales" but elsewhere (in an inconspicuous aside) declares him one of his favourite writers, admiring, "the lucidity of his thought." He rants down Finnegans Wake, but his admiration for Joyce's Ulysses is unmistakable, if between the lines. I feel strongly, however, that the conspicuous absence of praise for other writers in this book is the result of a conscious, artistic sensibility. Nabokov's art everywhere avoids the frank and literal-minded sentiment, of which ernest praise is one variety. (He also in one of these interviews admits to a fear that the writer he praises will read of this praise with confusion, hating, as he may do, Nabokov's own writing). And there is no question that Nabokov considered these interviews--both his painstakingly written responses, and the public image those responses were intended to engineer--a part of his art, and beholden to the exacting laws that make his fiction so original and superb.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a Man
Review: The title says it all. The last section of the book, some twenty pages consists of primarily lepidoptera papers which may or may not interest fiction devotees of N's fiction. His generous use of the epithet "philistine" may rouse some prejudice against N.'s apparently pharisaical and insolent notions on literature, psychology, politics and such, but he always is sure to qualify those strong opinions as solely his own; in large, he abstains from truth claims that would make his book little more than the exegesis of a Pharisee. Besides, one doesn't read a book of opinions for the author's Truth (with a "T!"), unless that is, you are a Kurt Vonnegut follower. Great insights, humor and opinions from a great author. Minus a star or two for a certain degree of repetitiveness.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Nabokov fan, disillusioned by this book
Review: Before I first encountered STRONG OPINIONS, I was a Nabokov fan. Reading this collection, however, changed my view of him for good. The man's weird animus against literally hundreds of major authors (Cervantes, Camus, Balzac, Mann, Stendhal, Lorca, Faulkner--you name 'em!) is terribly mean-spirited and small. His attacks on Freud get tiresome, and one begins to wonder if he ever did read much Freud in any depth. He also goes after other leading thinkers and even lets fly against, in his words, "Einstein's slick formulae" (I'm really quoting). And his defense of the U.S. war on Vietnam is incredibly ignorant and simplistic, even stupid. Nabokov the artist was a major presence who altered the shape of literature. Nabokov the man, by contrast, was a nasty, dogmatic, narrow-minded little fellow who couldn't countenance any aesthetic but his own.
I'm not the only Nabokovophile who has had this "conversion." I know several others who've had the same experience.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A portrait of the artist as a man
Review: The book includes interviews, literary essays and five short articles on Lepidoptera. Since the book covers the main themes in Nabokov's life on one hand and is carefully compiled by Nabokov himself on the other, it presents a kind of self-portrait. Its author was a remarkably relentless rewriter, who noted that "[he] rewrote several times every word that [he] has ever published" and that even his recounting of the last night's dream to his wife was "but the first draft", and so this book is the result of no less a meticulous labor than his novels are. It presents a carefully drafted portrait, at times blatantly revealing, at times guardedly mystifying, but always elegantly or freshly phrased.
In his "Lectures on Literature", Nabokov mentions a character in "Bleak House", a man appearing only for a sentence or two just to help carry in from the street an old man in his chair. He gets a tuppence for his labors, tosses it in the air, catches it over-handed, and leaves. Nabokov points out that this one word, "over-handed", makes all the difference: it is a drop of color which renders even an incidental character alive. It seems that Nabokov's own public persona is similarly brought to life with the stories of borrowing a television set (which otherwise he did not watch) to see the first man landing on the Moon, or of having driven a car twice in his life (both times disastrously).
Some of the essays presented in the book are real gems. The 4-page piece "On Adaptation" is a beautiful critique of Robert Lowell's unfortunate rendition in English of Mandelshtam's famous poem. The highly amusing penultimate sentence, where Nabokov applies to one of Lowell's poems the techniques Lowell used in his version of Mandelshtam's, makes the most expressive argument for literal translation and for preserving the writer's intent. In a way, this one sentence makes a better case for Nabokov's verbatim translation of "Eugene Onegin" than the much longer if very engaging article answering Wilson's critique of Nabokov's translation of Pushkin's masterpiece.
Another essay, "Inspiration", provides a rare glimpse into the writer's sanctum sanctorum: a detailed description of a writer's interaction with his muse. Nabokov presents here several examples of what he considers inspired writing and expresses hope that students will learn to recognize it in the books they read. The students of Nabokov will certainly recognize inspiration in his own writing, revealing itself in elegant phrasing and fierce independence of thought and making his answers even to the most mundane questions worth reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Strong opinions is the term
Review: This collection of interviews and articles is essential reading for lovers of Nabokov's fiction. Throughout he presents himself as a full blown iconoclast, presenting in lucid prose (Nabokov never answered interview questions without having time to prepare beforehand), delicious vignettes into his character and theories of literature.
Here you will find, a staunch defence of why he translated Pushkin literally (and a funny damning of his erstwhile foil, Edmund Wilson's misplaced criticism; reflections on the course of his triptych life (Russia, Europe America); how his literary inspiration comes (the complete novel wells up inside him before it is written then curls itself out); a refusal to allow any social message to his work; the pleasures of writing (the tingle in the spine); his condemnation of a host of cannonical authors - Faulkner, Hemmingway, Conrad, Dostoevski etc.; and most importantly, the leitmoteif that runs through his thought, an extended diatribe against the vulgarities and pervasiveness of 'poshlost' (see p.100 in the paperback edition). If you absorb this defintition, and agree with its tenets, you will start to notice instances of poshlost spreading like a rash all over contemporary letters, films and journalism.
In addition there are a couple of beautifully written pieces on butterfly hunting, a perfect subject for Nabokov's perceptive, aesthetic mind, and a lifelong passion of his.
Review Summary: Nabokov at leisure
Review: A wonderful collection of Nabokov's views on matters he did not enlarge upon in his fiction, due to the tight aesthetic constraints he placed on that art. The result is a kind of, "Nabokov at leisure" (however, see below) where he holds forth with magnificent wit and insight on everything from swimming pools to tennis, hilariously demolishes several negative reviews of his work, offers the reader a peek into his writing methods and work ethic, rebuffs many a question with scathing repartee that will have you giving vent to rather inelegant guffaws--and on it goes, page after scintillating page.
A certain eccentricity of Nabokov's is worth mentioning here, because it has a direct bearing on this book. Nabokov loftily refused to sit for "chatty" interviews, instead demanding each question in writing, in advance, in response to which, on the day of the interview, (even when he appeared on TV: see YouTube!) he would read his carefully composed reply. This quaint foible (a measure of the importance he placed on words and self-presentation) results in a superbly crafted read, where the questions are often of a pedestrian sort that, put to Nabokov, become fascinating ("How do you spend your day?") followed by answers in his characteristically virtuosic prose style.
I thoroughly recommend this book!
A final thought. Some reviewers have made much of Nabokov's vituperation of esteemed writers, even going so far as to claim that his arrogance has put them off his writing. At first blush, the criticism seems justified--indeed, other than Gogol and Pushkin, one gets the impression that the man has not read a single writer that he tolerates, let alone likes. But this is a mistake, and the scorn is not to be taken too literally.
Nabokov pillories authors in one place only to very quietly praise them in another. For example, he accuses Borges of writing, "pretentious fairy tales" but elsewhere (in an inconspicuous aside) declares him one of his favourite writers, admiring, "the lucidity of his thought." He rants down Finnegans Wake, but his admiration for Joyce's Ulysses is unmistakable, if between the lines. I feel strongly, however, that the conspicuous absence of praise for other writers in this book is the result of a conscious, artistic sensibility. Nabokov's art everywhere avoids the frank and literal-minded sentiment, of which ernest praise is one variety. (He also in one of these interviews admits to a fear that the writer he praises will read of this praise with confusion, hating, as he may do, Nabokov's own writing). And there is no question that Nabokov considered these interviews--both his painstakingly written responses, and the public image those responses were intended to engineer--a part of his art, and beholden to the exacting laws that make his fiction so original and superb.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a Man
Review: The title says it all. The last section of the book, some twenty pages consists of primarily lepidoptera papers which may or may not interest fiction devotees of N's fiction. His generous use of the epithet "philistine" may rouse some prejudice against N.'s apparently pharisaical and insolent notions on literature, psychology, politics and such, but he always is sure to qualify those strong opinions as solely his own; in large, he abstains from truth claims that would make his book little more than the exegesis of a Pharisee. Besides, one doesn't read a book of opinions for the author's Truth (with a "T!"), unless that is, you are a Kurt Vonnegut follower. Great insights, humor and opinions from a great author. Minus a star or two for a certain degree of repetitiveness.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Nabokov fan, disillusioned by this book
Review: Before I first encountered STRONG OPINIONS, I was a Nabokov fan. Reading this collection, however, changed my view of him for good. The man's weird animus against literally hundreds of major authors (Cervantes, Camus, Balzac, Mann, Stendhal, Lorca, Faulkner--you name 'em!) is terribly mean-spirited and small. His attacks on Freud get tiresome, and one begins to wonder if he ever did read much Freud in any depth. He also goes after other leading thinkers and even lets fly against, in his words, "Einstein's slick formulae" (I'm really quoting). And his defense of the U.S. war on Vietnam is incredibly ignorant and simplistic, even stupid. Nabokov the artist was a major presence who altered the shape of literature. Nabokov the man, by contrast, was a nasty, dogmatic, narrow-minded little fellow who couldn't countenance any aesthetic but his own.
I'm not the only Nabokovophile who has had this "conversion." I know several others who've had the same experience.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A portrait of the artist as a man
Review: The book includes interviews, literary essays and five short articles on Lepidoptera. Since the book covers the main themes in Nabokov's life on one hand and is carefully compiled by Nabokov himself on the other, it presents a kind of self-portrait. Its author was a remarkably relentless rewriter, who noted that "[he] rewrote several times every word that [he] has ever published" and that even his recounting of the last night's dream to his wife was "but the first draft", and so this book is the result of no less a meticulous labor than his novels are. It presents a carefully drafted portrait, at times blatantly revealing, at times guardedly mystifying, but always elegantly or freshly phrased.
In his "Lectures on Literature", Nabokov mentions a character in "Bleak House", a man appearing only for a sentence or two just to help carry in from the street an old man in his chair. He gets a tuppence for his labors, tosses it in the air, catches it over-handed, and leaves. Nabokov points out that this one word, "over-handed", makes all the difference: it is a drop of color which renders even an incidental character alive. It seems that Nabokov's own public persona is similarly brought to life with the stories of borrowing a television set (which otherwise he did not watch) to see the first man landing on the Moon, or of having driven a car twice in his life (both times disastrously).
Some of the essays presented in the book are real gems. The 4-page piece "On Adaptation" is a beautiful critique of Robert Lowell's unfortunate rendition in English of Mandelshtam's famous poem. The highly amusing penultimate sentence, where Nabokov applies to one of Lowell's poems the techniques Lowell used in his version of Mandelshtam's, makes the most expressive argument for literal translation and for preserving the writer's intent. In a way, this one sentence makes a better case for Nabokov's verbatim translation of "Eugene Onegin" than the much longer if very engaging article answering Wilson's critique of Nabokov's translation of Pushkin's masterpiece.
Another essay, "Inspiration", provides a rare glimpse into the writer's sanctum sanctorum: a detailed description of a writer's interaction with his muse. Nabokov presents here several examples of what he considers inspired writing and expresses hope that students will learn to recognize it in the books they read. The students of Nabokov will certainly recognize inspiration in his own writing, revealing itself in elegant phrasing and fierce independence of thought and making his answers even to the most mundane questions worth reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Strong opinions is the term
Review: This collection of interviews and articles is essential reading for lovers of Nabokov's fiction. Throughout he presents himself as a full blown iconoclast, presenting in lucid prose (Nabokov never answered interview questions without having time to prepare beforehand), delicious vignettes into his character and theories of literature.
Here you will find, a staunch defence of why he translated Pushkin literally (and a funny damning of his erstwhile foil, Edmund Wilson's misplaced criticism; reflections on the course of his triptych life (Russia, Europe America); how his literary inspiration comes (the complete novel wells up inside him before it is written then curls itself out); a refusal to allow any social message to his work; the pleasures of writing (the tingle in the spine); his condemnation of a host of cannonical authors - Faulkner, Hemmingway, Conrad, Dostoevski etc.; and most importantly, the leitmoteif that runs through his thought, an extended diatribe against the vulgarities and pervasiveness of 'poshlost' (see p.100 in the paperback edition). If you absorb this defintition, and agree with its tenets, you will start to notice instances of poshlost spreading like a rash all over contemporary letters, films and journalism.
In addition there are a couple of beautifully written pieces on butterfly hunting, a perfect subject for Nabokov's perceptive, aesthetic mind, and a lifelong passion of his.