Collected Stories
Vladimir Nabokov · 1995
Nabokov's short fiction showcases his extraordinary facility: the linguistic pyrotechnics, the games with consciousness and memory. These stories are puzzles that feel like poems.
The case against
Sixty-five stories, and the early Berlin pieces are apprentice work: mood sketches about émigrés and twilight that end on a shiver rather than a meaning. Nabokov's polish never falters, which is part of the problem; the dazzle is constant, the warmth intermittent. Read a dozen straight and the games begin to repeat.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
