Nabokovilia: Michael Chabon
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)
Afterword: ...the Zugzwang of Mendel Shpilman was devised by Reb Vladimir Nabokov and is presented in Speak, Memory. (p. 418)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000)
Here, in a weird radiance cast by the tails of a thousand writhing glowworms, sits on a barbarous throne a raven-haired giantess with immense green wings, sensuously furred antennae, and a sharp expression. She is, quite obviously, the Cimmerian moth goddess, Lo. We know it before she even opens her rowanberry mouth.
"You?" the goddess says, her feelers wilting in evident dismay. "You are the one the book has chosen? You are to be the next Mistress of the Night?"
Miss [Judy] Dark -- wreathed discreetly now in curling tufts of dry-ice smoke -- concedes that it seems unlikely. (p. 271)
Wonder Boys (1995)
"You have to keep with it," I told him. "You have to read on." I was making the argument I had made to myself, over the years -- to the harsh and unremitting editor who lived in the deepest recesses of my gut. It sounded awfully thin, spoken aloud at last. "It's that kind of a book. Like Ada, you know, or Gravity's Rainbow. It teaches you how to read it as you go along. Or -- Kravnik's." (p. 312)
Additional Chabon/Nabokov material:
"You have to keep with it," I told him. "You have to read on." I was making the argument I had made to myself, over the years -- to the harsh and unremitting editor who lived in the deepest recesses of my gut. It sounded awfully thin, spoken aloud at last. "It's that kind of a book. Like Ada, you know, or Gravity's Rainbow. It teaches you how to read it as you go along. Or -- Kravnik's." (p. 312)
Additional Chabon/Nabokov material:
- Michael Chabon at the Nabokov Museum (also collected in Maps and Legends)
- Michael Chabon on Wes Anderson
Nabokovilia in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas
Speak, Memory. No, not a word. My neck moves. Hallelujah. Timothy Langland Cavendish can command his neck and his name has come home. November 7. I recall a yesterday and see a tomorrow. Time, no arrow, no boomerang, but a concertina. Bedsores. How many days have I lain here? Pass. How old is Tim Cavendish? Fifty? Seventy? A hundred? How can you forget your age? (354)
Nabokovilia: Speak, Memorates
An article on Tono Monogatari, in the 2010 January Believer issue, is entitled Speak, Memorates. (Other McSweeney's-connected Speak, Memory
variations include Tom Bissell's Speak, Commentary
and George Saunders's Eat, Memory
.)
variations include Tom Bissell's Speak, Commentary and George Saunders's Eat, Memory.)
On Looking Up Nabokov
Yes:
To search online after every unfamiliar word in Speak, Memory would be to invite a distracting systole of attention, drawing me away from the slightly faded pages and directing me to the screen’s eclat, then pulling back again, only to rush in towards the broken sentence abandoned for semiotic insight, my eyes searching for the syntagma where I left off.