In his voice – WORD CHASE with Adair V

May 5, 2013June 6, 2018Adair V

Bruce Stone on Nabokov, Cossacks, God’s Wrath, and Art as Aggravation

How do you solve a problem like Lolita? Twenty-five years ago, Erica Jong found this noise over its propriety exasperating, bearing just the terse rebuttal, “It’s art, stupid.”

August 14, 2012Adair V

My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard, reviewed by James Wood

“Walter Benjamin, in his great essay “The Storyteller,” written in the nineteen-thirties, argues that classic storytelling is structured around death. It is the fire at which listeners warm their hands.”

August 8, 2012June 2, 2018Adair V

The Paradise of the Library, An essay by James Salter

A private library of good size is an insolent form of riches, and the desire to have more books is difficult to rationalize, especially in view of the fact that you do not or cannot read them all but still you might. The bibliophile is, after all, like a sultan or khan who has countless wives already but another two or three are always irresistible.

February 27, 2012June 1, 2018Adair V

Vladimir Nabokov & Lionel Trilling discuss ‘Lolita’

Watch these clips from the 1950s show “Close Up” in which Nabokov tells how he enjoyed breeding Lolita “in his own laboratory” and refers to the novel as “a fruit salad”.