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challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
This memoir is the first work by Nabokov I have ever read, and I believe it gives crucial insight into this incredible writer. My first impression while reading this book is that he is an author who cannot be read passively. He has a tendency to magnify small moments and minimize large moments in his life, giving them a significance that ordinarily I feel like they wouldn’t be given. As a result, I felt like I had to really sit with his writing and fully engage with every sentence in order to understand what he is trying to subtly reveal to the reader. I also found it striking how much time and care he spent describing the lives of other people, but it is another way he shifts the focus away from himself, leaving the reader to read between the lines.
The other aspect of his writing that stood out to me is its beauty. He is able to capture moments so vividly, which could be in part due to his synesthesia. One of my favorite lines in Speak, Memory is “The snow is real, though, and as I bend to it and scoop up a handful, sixty years crumble to glittering frost-dust between my fingers” (Nabokov 100) because it is highly evocative and paints a clear picture in my mind. Nabokov’s writing just has such a cinematic quality to it, and I love it.
One of the other lines that has stuck with me since finishing this memoir was “I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and, presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my former self, where it had seemed to be so safe from the intrusion of the artist” (Nabokov 95) because it perfectly conveys how interconnected the writing we read is to the author at the time they wrote their work. Authors give readers a gift of themselves when they write , and it is a wonderful reminder of why writing, even beyond Nabokov’s work, matters.
Ultimately, Speak, Memory reads more as snippets of his life fading in and out of focus rather than a straightforward narrative. In particular, the transitions from one section to the next, like “Meanwhile the setting has changed. The bermed tree and the high snowdrift with its xanthic hole have been removed by a silent property man” (Nabokov 105), give the text this constantly shifting quality that is very memory-like. The magnification of small things also creates the sense of reliving these moments because at least from my perspective, a person experiences the present through an intimate awareness of small details such as the sensation of breathing or the sound of footsteps walking down the hall.
For me, this book is insightful and beautiful, and I would definitely recommend this to anyone with an interest in Nabokov or who likes to delve deeply into what they are reading.
Content Warnings
Minor: Pedophilia
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Genocide, Pedophilia