Véra (Mrs.Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

Author:Stacy Schiff [Schiff, Stacy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction
Amazon: B004G5ZY7Y
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 1999-02-23T08:00:00+00:00

2

Lolita spent the fall on the bestseller list, the first novel since Gone with the Wind to sell a hundred thousand copies within three weeks of publication. (More meaningfully from Véra’s point of view, Lolita was the “first representative of true literature on the ‘List’ ” since Thornton Wilder’s Bridge of San Luis Rey, which she considered “a moderately good book.”) Gorgeous full-page ads ran in the major media, into which Minton no longer needed to insert sober endorsements from the academy: In the course of the fall the novel was recognized as a virtuouso performance in The New York Times Book Review, in The Atlantic Monthly, in The New Yorker, by Dorothy Parker in Esquire.* No day passed without Lolita being discussed somewhere in the press.

Only rarely did the couple miss a mention. When the uncle who had settled his enormous, prerevolutionary fortune on Nabokov had died in 1915, Vladimir had had a curious dream: Uncle Vasya reappeared to announce that he would one day return as Harry and Kuvyrkin, in dream terms a team of circus clowns. Harry and Kuvyrkin materialized now, under the aliases Harris and Kubrick. While the Nabokovs lunched on September 13 with Mydans and the Life caption writer, the telephone rang. It was Morris Bishop, calling with congratulations. When Véra expressed confusion, Bishop read to her from that morning’s Times. The Nabokovs had been buying the paper every day—Vladimir was avidly following a Staten Island murder case, in which an eight-year-old Mormon boy claimed he had butchered his parents with a kitchen knife—but had not yet consulted that Saturday’s edition. It fell to Bishop to notify Véra that movie rights in the novel had been sold to the directing-producing team of Stanley Kubrick and James Harris for $150,000, or about seventeen times Vladimir’s Cornell salary. The couple knew Minton was in negotiations but not that any agreement had been reached. How Véra conveyed Bishop’s news to the three at table, who immediately leapt upon the paper in search of the five-paragraph announcement, is unclear. She noted only that “the news was broken in a way Time”—but of course not she—“would have called ‘dramatic.’ ”

The film deal made Vladimir popular, or prominent, in a way that was uncomfortable for both Nabokovs. Quickly Véra pointed out that the first half of the money would have to be staggered over several years, for tax reasons; that the second half might never be paid; that the promised 15 percent of producer’s profits could prove chimerical, in which prophecy she was correct. Both Nabokovs were clearly embarrassed to be perceived as recipients of what seemed to all a staggering sum of money. To many on the Cornell campus, even Lolita’s five-dollar cover price was prohibitive. When a colleague observed that Vladimir would surely never have to teach again “having struck oil in Beverly Hills,” Véra countered that they were indeed having a hectic time, but that the colleague was mistaken. Vladimir could not part with Cornell; they planned only to take a year’s leave.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.