Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor

The more than 150 essays, interviews, and letters collected in this volume, some translated from the Russian for the first time, serve as an illuminating complement to Nabokov’s 1973 nonfiction roundup, Strong Opinions. Spanning the years 1921 to 1977 and drawn from sources as diverse as the New Republic, Sports Illustrated, and journals for Europe’s Russian émigré community, they show the author to have been strongly opinionated on matters that run the gamut from literary style, to his discoveries as an amateur lepidopterist or the cultural impact of his controversial novel Lolita. Nabokov is passionate in his assessment of literary favorites such as Pushkin, whose work he praises for “its ample and powerful lyricism,” and bluntly critical of most Soviet literature, which he derides as propagandistic “village dreadful fantasies.” His incisive wit and intellectual honesty are also evident in his responses to interviewers’ repetitive questions about the scandal caused by Lolita. Nabokov observed, “I write what I like and some like what I write,” and his fans will find much to like here. (Nov.)