Vladimir Nabokov
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Style Pop Quiz: Nabokov and Proust
By Jay Innis Murray In his lecture on Proust, Nabokov breaks down what he considers three especially distinctive elements of Proust’s style. With a flourish of humor, he describes metaphorical imagery, clauses, and Proust’s merging of conversations and descriptions. As a prelude to this, Nabokov makes a claim about style in general. It’s not a… Continue reading
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Mid-Year 2023 Reading List
I’ve finished 34 books half way through the year. Not a sprinter’s pace, but it is more titles than I finished in all of 2022. The list is below. There are some highlights. There are always highlights. I finished two books by the late Mark Fisher and also read probably 70% of his k-punk blog.… Continue reading
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Things I Had to Look Up While Reading This Week (Nabokov, Hawkes, O’Connor)
I should know these, I know. I know. virago (noun) a loud-voiced, ill-tempered, scolding woman. From Nabokov’s Mary. Chapter Two. In a haphazard way she cleaned the rooms herself, but she had never been able to cope with food, so she kept a cook—the terror of the local market, a vast red-haired virago who on… Continue reading
About Talking Big
All posts by Jay Innis Murray.
Always on the lookout for new books to review. Please drop me a line at grashupfer@gmail.com.
Recent Posts
- The Object That Could Speak: A Review of The Wax Child (2025) by Olga Ravn.
- Impossible to Say: A Review of Glantz (2025) by Tobias Ryan
- A Review of The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers
- Stealing Einstein’s Underpants – A Review of The Delegation (2025) by Avner Landes
- A Review of On the Calculation of Volume 1 (2024) by Solvej Balle
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