{"id":8160,"date":"2018-10-22T16:57:12","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T20:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=8160"},"modified":"2018-10-22T17:22:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T21:22:08","slug":"against-biography-nabokov-versus-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2018\/10\/22\/against-biography-nabokov-versus-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Against biography: Nabokov versus Field"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Title<\/a><\/p>\n

Among the Nabokov family volumes recently added to Houghton Library\u2019s catalog are several owned and annotated by V\u00e9ra Nabokov. Vladimir\u2019s wife of 52 years, V\u00e9ra was indissolubly his literary partner as well: she read, edited, and translated his work, besides managing his business and legal affairs; attending his college courses and even teaching them when he fell ill; and innumerable other tasks. Apart from her amplification of Vladimir\u2019s voice, we typically hear little from V\u00e9ra herself: \u201cthe more you leave me out,\u201d she once told biographer Brian Boyd, \u201cthe closer to the truth you will be.\u201d (For further reading on the Nabokovs\u2019 relationship, see this New Yorker article<\/a>.) In the volume pictured here, though, V\u00e9ra candidly disputes the work of another biographer, Vladimir\u2019s first, through substantial marginalia.<\/p>\n

VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov is Andrew Field\u2019s third book-length study of Vladimir Nabokov. Field dedicated his career to the study of Nabokov \u2013 his first book brought the author\u2019s early Russian-language work out of obscurity for a Western audience \u2013 and for a time won the author\u2019s favor, and close access to him as a biographical source, as a result.<\/p>\n

VN, published after Nabokov\u2019s death, folds both of Field\u2019s prior books, along with supplementary material, into a single critical biography, but one reflective of the soured relationship between author and subject. Gone are the quasi-Nabokovian structural flourishes that characterized the prior works; in their place are numerous speculations and leaps of logic. Reviews from the time of VN\u2019s publication, such as this review from the London Review of Books<\/a> and this one from the Washington Post<\/a>, offer more detail on Field\u2019s trajectory from prot\u00e9g\u00e9 to outcast; on the questionable suppositions that characterize VN; and on the continued antipathy between Field and the surviving Nabokovs. For Brian Boyd\u2019s own review, see the Times Literary Supplement, 21 April 1987, pages 431-2.<\/p>\n

\"Vera's

Vera’s marginalia in Field’s biography.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

V\u00e9ra was a curator not only of Vladimir\u2019s literary output and lifestyle but of his public figure, his image, his legacy. Inevitably, then, she and VN are at loggerheads throughout\u2013V\u00e9ra peppers the margins with question marks, exclamation points, and \u2018no\u2019 upon \u2018no\u2019, serially refuting Field\u2019s conjectures and recreations.<\/p>\n

\"Vera

Vera disputes Nabokov’s presence at a funeral.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

At times, she offers her contrasting memory of events: Field describes Nabokov\u2019s aggressive behavior at a funeral; but V\u00e9ra says he was not in attendance. Field characterizes Nabokov\u2019s relations with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as \u201cstrained\u201d; V\u00e9ra writes: \u201cthere were no relations\u201d. From brief marks of disbelief to lengthy explications, V\u00e9ra\u2019s comments amount to a considerable negation of Field\u2019s text.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Field, Andrew, 1938- VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov.<\/em> RC9.N1125.W986f<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks to bibliographic assistant\u00a0Ryan Wheeler\u00a0for contributing this post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the Nabokov family volumes recently added to Houghton Library\u2019s catalog are several owned and annotated by V\u00e9ra Nabokov. Vladimir\u2019s wife of 52 years, V\u00e9ra was indissolubly his literary partner as well: she read, edited, and translated his work, besides managing his business and legal affairs; attending his college courses and even teaching them when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-27C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8160"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8206,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8160\/revisions\/8206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}