Vera (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

• Véra Nabokov: Add a description of this character.
• Vladimir Nabokov

Quotes edit see section history

• “At times she appeared to be struggling single-handedly to keep the world from tumbling into a state of "glossological disarray."”

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• Véra Slonim’s ability to transfer the observations of one sense into the vocabulary of another—what is properly known as synesthesia and often manifests itself as “colored hearing”—must

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• Two synesthetics might have a thorny discussion over breakfast as to the color of Monday, the taste of E-flat.

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• Caress the details, he directed. Art is a deception; the great artist a deceiver. Read for the tingle, the shiver up the spine. Do not read but—here he feigned a stutter—re-re-read a book. Look at the harlequins.

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• Nabokov did not teach literature as it had been taught in America before or as it has been taught since.

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• the two read War and Peace to each other in midsummer, Vladimir concluding that the novel “is really a very childish piece of writing.”

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• Here is what she must have known by the time she married him: That he was the most gifted Russian writer of his generation. That he was a man of titanic self-absorption. That he had a certain knack for falling in love. That he had an equivalent lack of ability for taming the practical world.

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• “He loved himself with a passionate and completely reciprocated love.”

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• The most important thing in love is complete, radiant truthfulness—so that there won’t be any of the petty deceptions, those quick lies that are in all other human relationships—and no posing before yourself, nor before the one you love: that is the true purity of love. And in love you must be Siamese twins, where one sneezes when the other sniffs tobacco. And then you must remember that the greatest love is the simplest love, just as the best verse is that written most simply.*

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• The crudest curriculum vitae crows and flaps its wings in a style peculiar to the undersigner. I doubt whether you can even give your telephone number without giving something of yourself. —NABOKOV, NIKOLAI GOGOL

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• He told his students Ph.D. stood for “Department of Philistines.”

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Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Stacy Schiff (Author)

Awards edit see section history

• Pulitzer Prize (2000: Biography)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 928'.1

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Specific Groups › Women
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Arts & Literature › Authors
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Memoirs