Subject
Nabokoviana
Date
Body
The current NYTBR (p. 24) has a review of _At the Still Point: A Memoir_
by Carol Buckley. Judging by Jane O'Reilly's review, it tells of the
traumas associated with being the last and least of the gifted Buckley
Clan whose most prominent member is William F. Buckley, founder of
_The National Review_ and one-time, part-time neighbor to VN on the
shores of Lake Geneva. Buckley reportedly gave VN a free subscription
and alludes to the master in at least one of his spy thrillers.
Nabokov enters Ms. O'Reilly's review not via the Buckley connection but
through the reviewer's experience with _Speak, Memory_. Jane O'Reilly, the
author of _No Turning Back: Two Nuns Battle with the Vatican Over Women's
Right to Choose_, teaches a do-it-yourself adult ed class on memoir
writing. She had her students read _Speak, Memory_ "as an example of the
best that could be done.... They recoiled. One, to the applause of the
others, described the effort of reading Nabokov as 'like wading through
wet sand'." Next term, O'Reilly plans to switch to Carol Buckley's saga of
"depression, pills and alcohol" which Ms. Buckley surmounted by only after
mastering the thought that "What is special is to be ordinary."
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618
by Carol Buckley. Judging by Jane O'Reilly's review, it tells of the
traumas associated with being the last and least of the gifted Buckley
Clan whose most prominent member is William F. Buckley, founder of
_The National Review_ and one-time, part-time neighbor to VN on the
shores of Lake Geneva. Buckley reportedly gave VN a free subscription
and alludes to the master in at least one of his spy thrillers.
Nabokov enters Ms. O'Reilly's review not via the Buckley connection but
through the reviewer's experience with _Speak, Memory_. Jane O'Reilly, the
author of _No Turning Back: Two Nuns Battle with the Vatican Over Women's
Right to Choose_, teaches a do-it-yourself adult ed class on memoir
writing. She had her students read _Speak, Memory_ "as an example of the
best that could be done.... They recoiled. One, to the applause of the
others, described the effort of reading Nabokov as 'like wading through
wet sand'." Next term, O'Reilly plans to switch to Carol Buckley's saga of
"depression, pills and alcohol" which Ms. Buckley surmounted by only after
mastering the thought that "What is special is to be ordinary."
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618