cruis'n esoterica’s Reviews > The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov > Status Update

"The Fight" - 4.5 - nabokov has Activated. love the bustling beach, the glittering tavern. comparisons range from laserlike, discomfiting ("...the beer, which hissed like horse urine") to hilariously overwrought analogues ("...a motion that revives the immortal gesture of the Discobolus," "...a rapturous Daedalian hum," "...the wind tore at their clothes as in the painting The Destruction of Pompeii." now i'm hooked.

"The Dragon" - 3.5 - VN does a proto-TC Boyle. florid but playful, so much so that it understays its welcome a bit. seems like he had the image of the snoozing dragon covered in advertisements in mind, but little else.

"Christmas" - 2.5 - wordy illustration of grief that concludes with some pretty potent, dreamlike imagery but otherwise drags

"A Letter That Never Reached Russia" - 3 - "reddens damply"

"Bachmann" - 3.5 - nice little portrait of a goofy, solitary artist (a motif nabokov, maybe unsurprisingly, enjoys) in the midst of the greatest tragedy of his life. maybe this collection's first instance of a kind of pseudohistorical, quasiessayistic style.

"La Veneziana" - 4 - languorous, ornate, surprisingly silly. the slow burn and the posh texture are really annoying at first, but it all pays off in a big way, and you get some very entertaining bluster about art and the universe in the process.