American Stories

In sheer volume, Nabokov's American stories were dwarfed by his Russian output. Between the completion of his first novel in English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, in 1939, and his first novel written on American soil, Bend Sinister in 1947, he wrote five stories in English. James Laughlin included those five, along with three translated from Russian and one translated from French, in Nine Stories (1947). Along with his occasional New Yorker poetry, these stories served as Nabokov's introduction - first in The Atlantic, later in The New Yorker - to an audience unfamiliar with his critical studies and translations.

His first three stories - "The Assistant Producer," "That in Aleppo Once," and "A Forgotten Poet" - are all set in Russia, and involve somewhat experimental narrative devices. In "Time and Ebb," his ninety-something narrator details 1940s New York through a retrospective scrim, vividly recalling his experiences of eighty years before. "Double Talk," which was later renamed "Conversation Piece, 1945," was published in June 1945. It is his most political short story, taking postwar Russian émigré and American Soviet fellow-travelers to task along with German sympathizers of all nationalities. "Signs and Symbols," arguably Nabokov's best story in English, was published in May 1948, and "Lance," the last of his English stories, in 1952. ("The Vane Sisters" was published in 1959, just after he sailed for Europe with Véra, but had been finished since 1951.) The success that chapters of his memoirs and Pnin garnered between 1948 and 1955 secured his popular audience and financial security, allowing him to focus on longer works.

The items listed below pertain to Nabokov's life and career and are the contents of the exhibition at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, on view from April 23 through August 21, 1999. This checklist, primarily of items from the Library's Nabokov Archive, is included here to provide a sense of the rich holdings in this special collection.

Martha Foley, editor
The Best American Short Stories, 1946
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946
Berg Collection

55 Short Stories from The New Yorker
New York: Simon and Schuster, [1949]
Nabokov's copy, with his holograph annotations
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
"Cloud, Castle, Lake"
In: The Atlantic Monthly, June 1941
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
"Lance"
In: The New Yorker, February 2, 1952
Nabokov's copy, with his holograph corrections throughout the story
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov's Dozen
Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1958
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
"The Admirable Anglewing"
Holograph notes on seventeen index cards, ca. February-June 1959
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
"The Admirable Anglewing"
Pencil drawing, signed "V.N." and dated February 6, 1966
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
"Artificial copy, Daneus plexippus"
Pencil drawing, 1966
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
["Speak On, Memory"]
Holograph notes on index cards, ca. 1969