Sure Beats Tinder

Vera Nabokov - Picture by artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

I love reading about the lives of writers (Elaine Dundy and Colette's own stories are my favorites).   The summer before last, I was in an Infinite Jest book club and while I don't think I made it halfway through, I happily devoured David Foster Wallace's biography in its place.

The details are what do it for me.  Case in point: the courtship of Vladimir Nabokov and his wife (partner, muse and protector) Vera, described beautifully in a New Yorker piece on the book Letters to Vera.

Vera was born into a prominent, highly educated Jewish family in Saint Petersburg.  Her family fled during the Russian Revolution and eventually settled in Berlin, by way of Odessa, Istanbul and Sofia.  In Berlin, her father established a publishing house where she worked, while teaching and translating for the literary journal Rul.

The New Yorker says:

"One of its star contributors was a young aristocrat, ladies’ man, chess player, dandy, and lepidopterist who was earning his living as a private tutor. He signed his poetry with the pseudonym V. Sirin, but literary insiders, including Véra, knew his real name.

On May 8, 1923, Véra Slonim and Vladimir Nabokov met at a charity ball, or so he recalled. Schiff sets their meeting on a bridge, “over a chestnut-lined canal.” All accounts, including Véra’s, agree that she was hiding her features behind a black harlequin mask that she refused to lift as they meandered through the city to the Hohenzollernplatz, rapt in conversation."