NABOKOV IN AMERICA

The author of the immortal Lolita and Pale Fire, born to an eminent Russian family, conjures the apotheosis of the high modernist artist: cultured, refined—as European as you can get. But Vladimir Nabokov, who came to America in flight from the Nazis, came to think of his time in the US as the richest of his life. Indeed, Nabokov was not only happiest there, but his best work flowed from his deeply perceptive response to this exotic land.

Robert Roper fills out this most important period in the writer’s life with charm and insight— covering Nabokov’s critical friendship with Edmund Wilson, his time at Cornell, his role at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. But Nabokov in America finds its narrative heart in his serial sojourns into the wilds of the American West, undertaken with his wife, Vera, and their son, for over more than a decade. Nabokov covered more than 200,000 miles as he in? dulged in his other life passion: butterfly collecting. Roper has mined fresh sources to bring detail to these foundational journeys, and traces their significant influence in Nabokov’s work: on two?lane highways and in the motels and cafes of the late 40s, we feel Lolita draw near and find the sources of Nabokov’s seductive familiarity with the American mundane. Nabokov in America is also a love?letter to the nation’s literature: the miracle is in the breadth of Nabokov’s embrace of it, from Melville to Henry Miller, from Fenimore Cooper to the Beats. In this smartly focused biography, we feel anew the mountain breezes and the miles logged, the rich learning, and the coolly Romantic mind behind some of Nabokov’s most beloved books. Robert Roper’s journalism appears in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National Geo? graphic, Outside, and other publications. He won the 2002 Boardman?Tasker Prize for his book Fatal Mountaineer, and his most recent book, Now the Drum of War, was an Editor’s Choice pick in the New York Times Book Review. He has also published several novels. He teaches at John Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore and California.