Authors: Kurt Johnson, Steven L. Coates
ISBN-13: 9780071373302, ISBN-10: 0071373306
Format: Paperback
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies, The
Date Published: March 2001
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Part biography of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and part scientific detective story, Nabokov's Blues explores far-reaching questions of biogeography, evolution, and the worldwide crisis in biodiversity -- as well as the rich and varied place butterflies hold in Nabokov's fiction.
Vladimir Nabokov gained world fame with Lolita and captivated sophisticated readers with a score of other fictions, but he took equal pride in his studies of butterflies, publishing several technical papers describing and classifying members of the subfamily Polyommatini, or Blues. Nabokovians have long known of his lepidopterous labors; insect experts, however, often and wrongly neglected the novelist's research, which turns out (despite his amateur status) to include a serious contribution to knowledge of New World tropical Blues. During the late 1980s, lepidopterist Johnson and his colleague Zsolt B lint discovered, in remote parts of Central America, specimens that strengthened or proved the arguments Nabokov had made. The new Blues, the story of their discovery and the meaning and relevance of Nabokov's scientific studies give Johnson and New York Times writer Coates some of the subjects for their hard-to-classify book, a rarely attempted sort of hybrid that crosses informed science writing with literary biography. On the science side, Johnson and Coates cover the place of butterfly studies in Nabokov's life; the contentious history of butterfly and moth taxonomy and the development of its basic rules; and the use of butterfly studies in larger debates on ecology and evolution. Literarily, they discuss the meaning of butterflies and moths in Nabokov's writings and show that specialist knowledge of lepidopterology enriches the ironies and punch lines readers can find in Nabokov's The Gift. Curiously, Nabokov's Blues yield startling insights into biological mimicry--an appropriate turn, given the novelist's own penchants for masks and doubles. Readers with a taste for science and literature will love this book, which is both entertaining and polymathically informative--rather like the English/Russian, naturalist/novelist, scholar/artist Nabokov himself. Eight b&w illus. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Preface and Acknowledgments | xi | |
Part I | The Aurelian | |
1. | The Most Famous Lepidopterist in the World | 3 |
2. | A Tricky Subject | 29 |
3. | A Legendary Land | 56 |
4. | Lumpers and Splitters | 83 |
5. | A Life in Lepidoptery | 110 |
Part II | The Searchers | |
6. | Scientists and Strategy | 139 |
7. | The Incorrigible Continent | 164 |
8. | The Vertical Landscape | 185 |
9. | Finding the Frontiers | 208 |
10. | Dancing with Fire | 229 |
Part III | Nabokov's Blues | |
11. | The Code | 259 |
12. | The Race to Name Nabokov's Blues | 277 |
13. | Literature and Lepidoptera | 291 |
14. | Darwin's Finches--Nabokov's Blues | 315 |
Afterword | 340 | |
A Glossary of Binomial and Common Nabokovian Butterfly Names | 341 | |
Nabokov's Scientific Publications on Blue Butterflies | 347 | |
Principal Academic Publications Completing Nabokov's Work on Neotropical Blues | 348 | |
General Bibliography | 349 | |
Index | 357 |