my other life
"Tripodi had published a memoir that he called a novel, a number of essays and commentaries, an analysis of Moorish thought in Spain, a recent piece on the death of Nabokov, a long piece on the artist Balthus, a book about Italo Svevo's novel Senility that was longer than the novel itself. It was felt that he would someday win the Nobel Prize; it was almost certain that soon he would be offered a knighthood -- more patronage -- and that he would accept. Already he was treated as though he had been ennobled."
"Her shrug, different from the blank smile she had given me when I had mentioned Borges, conveyed an insulted reply, yet also a measure of respect for the range of my references. I was not only a physicist, I also read the classics.
"'Conrad was always described as an exile. So was Nabokov, and Solzhenitsyn, and all those people who come here and make a bundle of money publishing their prison diaries.'
"Again I sensed that Dr. Mylchreest was uncomfortable, wanting me to get to the point."
- A wonderful novel, a Borgesian experiment with identity plus a charged imaginary memoir -- the names are real enough (some, and some are rather gauzy masks), but this is the stuff of fiction. The two brief quotes don't do it justice, but they'll have to make do.
- More information on Paul Theroux.
Previous | Index | Next Nabokovilia | Home | Index | Books | Resources | Tributes | Contact | Shop