115-578: Edmund Valentine White III (born January 13, 1940) is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. White's books include Forgetting Elena (1973), described by Vladimir Nabokov as 'marvelous'; Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978); States of Desire (1980); and his trilogy of semi-autobiographic novels, A Boy's Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997). In addition, he has written biographies of
230-721: A medical director for the Gay Men's Health Crisis. Gay Men's Health Crisis received extensive coverage in Randy Shilts 's 1987 book And the Band Played On . The book described the progress of the pandemic , blaming the government, especially the Reagan administration and Secretary of Health Margaret Heckler , for failing to respond. It praised GMHC for its work. Shilts was a gay man who later died of AIDS. GMHC, along with several other organizations, boycotted
345-548: A "near doubling in rent." GMHC joined a coalition of AIDS organizations in signing an open letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urging that it stop using stigmatizing language, including "unprotected anal sex" in its materials. The letter stated that "unprotected" most often meant anal sex without a condom, but that the meaning of "unprotected" had changed alongside the approval of Truvada as pre-exposure prophylaxis . The organization announced Kelsey Louie as
460-483: A 'higher' aesthetic enjoyment should be attained, partly by paying great attention to details of style and structure. He detested what he saw as 'general ideas' in novels, and so when teaching Ulysses , for example, he would insist students keep an eye on where the characters were in Dublin (with the aid of a map) rather than teaching the complex Irish history that many critics see as being essential to an understanding of
575-548: A January 2004 letter to the editor, Ana Oliveira expressed a desire to use a harm-reduction approach to crystal meth use. Oliveira announced that she would leave GMHC, and her post as executive director, in December 2005. Dr. Marjoire Hill was named as the interim executive director in February 2006. Due to decreased funding, GMHC ended its "buddy program" in 2005. Prior to the 2008 presidential election , GMHC released
690-463: A New York state bill to track new HIV infections in New York state, breaking from a consensus against such reporting among AIDS groups in the state. In its initial statement, GMHC supported following the "same practice used for infectious diseases like syphilis and tuberculosis." In its statement, the organization did not initially say that it discouraged New York state from collecting names, though in
805-406: A November 1950 letter to Wilson, Nabokov offers a solid, non-comic appraisal: "Conrad knew how to handle readymade English better than I; but I know better the other kind. He never sinks to the depths of my solecisms , but neither does he scale my verbal peaks." Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English, sometimes in collaboration with his son, Dmitri. His trilingual upbringing had
920-598: A Russian-Jewish woman, at a charity ball in Berlin. They married in April 1925. Their only child, Dmitri , was born in 1934. In the course of 1936, Véra lost her job because of the increasingly antisemitic environment; Sergey Taboritsky was appointed deputy head of Germany's Russian-émigré bureau; and Nabokov began seeking a job in the English-speaking world. In 1937, Nabokov left Germany for France, where he had
1035-744: A biography (1993), Our Paris: sketches from memory (1995), Marcel Proust (1998), The Flaneur: a stroll through the paradoxes of Paris (2000) and Rimbaud (2008). He spent seven years writing the biography of Genet. White came back to the United States in 1997. The Married Man , a novel published in 2000, is gay-themed and draws on White's life. Fanny: A Fiction (2003) is a historical novel about novelist Frances Trollope and social reformer Frances Wright in early 19th-century America. White's 2006 play Terre Haute (produced in New York City in 2009) portrays discussions that take place when
1150-463: A boy. Afterward, he studied Chinese at the University of Michigan , graduating in 1962. Incestuous feelings colored his early family life. White stated that his mother, for instance, was sexually attracted to him. He, moreover, spoke of his own attraction to his father: "I think with my father he was somebody who every eye in the family was focused on and he was a sort of a tyrant and nice-looking,
1265-777: A curiously unpleasant country despite her great literature. Unfortunately, Russians today have completely lost their ability to kill tyrants. – Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov was a classical liberal , in the tradition of his father, a liberal statesman who served in the Provisional Government following the February Revolution of 1917 as a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party . In Speak, Memory , Nabokov proudly recounted his father's campaigns against despotism and staunch opposition to capital punishment . Nabokov
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#17327801510121380-577: A day, seven days a week, until his eyesight was permanently impaired." Though professional lepidopterists did not take Nabokov's work seriously during his life, new genetic research supports Nabokov's hypothesis that a group of butterfly species, called the Polyommatus blues, came to the New World over the Bering Strait in five waves, eventually reaching Chile. Russia has always been
1495-413: A documented rise in crystal meth use, GMHC also began a poster campaign warning about the links between crystal meth and unsafe sex practices. The posters ran on gay cruising sites such as Manhunt. GMHC and other community groups also pushed back against efforts from federal prosecutors to distribute posters with the names and faces of known crystal meth dealers in gay neighborhoods, including Chelsea. In
1610-562: A feature in the New York Times also spoke to several leaders who questioned the organization's direction. GMHC joined a coalition of national LGBTQ+-serving organizations and issued an open letter seeking justice for Trayvon Martin in July 2013. During the 2013 New York City mayoral election , GMHC held a forum for candidates to speak about issues related to HIV/AIDS in the city. Both Bill DeBlasio and Anthony Weiner attended
1725-780: A friend's estate and in September 1918 moved to Livadiya , at the time under the separatist Crimean Regional Government , in which Nabokov's father became a minister of justice. After the withdrawal of the German Army in November 1918 and the defeat of the White Army in early 1919, the Nabokovs sought exile in western Europe, along with other Russian refugees. They settled briefly in England, where Nabokov gained admittance to
1840-433: A grown man's consuming passion for a 12-year-old girl. This and his other novels, particularly Pale Fire (1962), won him a place among the greatest novelists of the 20th century. His longest novel, which met with a mixed response, is Ada (1969). He devoted more time to the composition of it than to any other. Nabokov's fiction is characterized by linguistic playfulness. For example, his short story " The Vane Sisters "
1955-437: A heart attack. In the 2023 interview with Colm Tóibín , White stated that he previously dated writer Tony Heilbut . Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Владимирович Набоков [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ nɐˈbokəf] ; 22 April [ O.S. 10 April] 1899 – 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin ( Владимир Сирин ),
2070-550: A later clarification, it said that it supported a code-based system rather than using the names of people living with HIV. In the 1990s a fundraising event on the Atlantic Ocean beach at Fire Island Pines, New York evolved into a major circuit party and developed a reputation for being connected with unsafe sex and recreational drug use . Activist Spencer Cox wrote a letter to the New York Times defending
2185-537: A millionaire gold-mine owner. His father was a leader of the pre-Revolutionary liberal Constitutional Democratic Party , and wrote numerous books and articles about criminal law and politics. His cousins included the composer Nicolas Nabokov . His paternal grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov, was Russia's Justice Minister during the reign of Alexander II . His paternal grandmother was the Baltic German Baroness Maria von Korff. Through his father, he
2300-686: A misguided view of the purpose of the exhibition and the professional responsibilities of museums." To commemorate the 20th anniversary of AIDS in America, the AIDS Quilt hung in the GMHC lobby during World AIDS Day in 2001. In the early 2000s, GMHC began a support group for people, especially gay men, who use crystal meth . In 2004, GMHC reported that 80% of new clients in its drug program reported using crystal meth, though it had been fewer than half in 2001. As part of an effort to raise awareness about
2415-428: A prisoner, based on terrorist bomber Timothy McVeigh , is visited by a writer based on Gore Vidal . (In real life McVeigh and Vidal corresponded but did not meet.) In 2005 White published his autobiography, My Lives — organized by theme rather than chronology – and in 2009 his memoir of New York life in the 1960s and 1970s, City Boy . White himself was the subject of a biography by Stephen Barber . His response to
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#17327801510122530-548: A profound influence on his art. Nabokov himself translated into Russian two books he originally wrote in English, Conclusive Evidence and Lolita . The "translation" of Conclusive Evidence was made because Nabokov felt that the English version was imperfect. Writing the book, he noted that he needed to translate his own memories into English and to spend time explaining things that are well known in Russia; he decided to rewrite
2645-473: A recognised poet and writer in Russian within the émigré community; he published under the nom de plume V. Sirin (a reference to the fabulous bird of Russian folklore). To supplement his scant writing income, he taught languages and gave tennis and boxing lessons. Dieter E. Zimmer has written of Nabokov's 15 Berlin years, "he never became fond of Berlin, and at the end intensely disliked it. He lived within
2760-483: A report outlining the stances of John McCain, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden on issues related to HIV/AIDS. After Barack Obama's election, GMHC released a policy brief detailing a set of federal priorities related to HIV, including the development of a national HIV/AIDS strategy, the repeal of the HIV travel ban, as well as a repeal of the federal ban on syringe exchange . GMHC has received multiple grants from
2875-572: A short affair with Irina Guadanini, also a Russian émigrée. His family followed him to France, making en route their last visit to Prague , then spent time in Cannes , Menton , Cap d'Antibes , and Fréjus , finally settling in Paris. This city also had a Russian émigré community. In 1939, in Paris, Nabokov wrote the 55-page novella The Enchanter , his final work of Russian fiction. He later called it "the first little throb of Lolita ." In May 1940,
2990-613: A staffer at Time-Life Books . After briefly relocating to Rome , San Francisco, and then returning to New York, he was briefly employed as an editor for the Saturday Review when the magazine was based in San Francisco in the early 1970s; after the magazine folded in 1973, White returned to New York to edit Horizon (a quarterly cultural journal) and freelance as a writer and editor for entities such as Time-Life and The New Republic . White wrote books and plays while
3105-682: A student at Cornell in the 1950s, Thomas Pynchon attended several of Nabokov's lectures and alluded to Lolita in chapter six of his novel The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), in which Serge, countertenor in the band the Paranoids, sings: Pynchon's prose style was influenced by Nabokov's preference for actualism over realism. Of the authors who came to prominence during Nabokov's life, John Banville , Don DeLillo , Salman Rushdie , and Edmund White were all influenced by him. The novelist John Hawkes took inspiration from Nabokov and considered himself his follower. Nabokov's story "Signs and Symbols"
3220-443: A survey of some aspects of gay life in America. In 1982, he helped found the group Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City. In the same year appeared White's best-known work, A Boy's Own Story — the first volume of an autobiographic-fiction series, continuing with The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997), describing stages in the life of a gay man from boyhood to middle age. Several characters in
3335-466: A theme that runs from his first book, Mary , to later works such as Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle . While the family was nominally Orthodox , it had little religious fervor. Vladimir was not forced to attend church after he lost interest. In 1916, Nabokov inherited the estate Rozhdestveno , next to Vyra, from his uncle Vasily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov ("Uncle Ruka" in Speak, Memory ). He lost it in
3450-512: A wealthy and prominent family of the Russian nobility . His family traced its roots to the 14th-century Tatar prince Nabok Murza , who entered into the service of the Tsars, and from whom the family name is derived. His father was Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov , a liberal lawyer, statesman, and journalist, and his mother was the heiress Yelena Ivanovna née Rukavishnikova, the granddaughter of
3565-470: A youth, including one unpublished novel titled Mrs Morrigan . White's debut novel, Forgetting Elena (1973), set on an island, can be read as commenting on gay culture in a coded manner. The Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov called it "a marvelous book". Written with his psychotherapist Charles Silverstein , The Joy of Gay Sex (1977) made him known to a wider readership. It is celebrated for its sex-positive tone. His next novel, Nocturnes for
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3680-528: Is "unprecedented" and that she was at the time the longest-serving CEO with a tenure of seven years. In the weeks following Hill's resignation, GMHC faced scrutiny for what some activists deemed as a lack of leadership in facing the AIDS crisis in New York City. ACT UP member Peter Staley wrote in HuffPost, " I can't tell you how many gay men I know who feel that GMHC is no longer on the community's radar," while
3795-484: Is disdained and frequently mocked in his works. Nabokov's creative processes involved writing sections of text on hundreds of index cards , which he expanded into paragraphs and chapters and rearranged to form the structure of his novels, a process that many screenwriters later adopted. Nabokov published under the pseudonym Vladimir Sirin in the 1920s to 1940s, occasionally to mask his identity from critics. He also makes cameo appearances in some of his novels, such as
3910-409: Is famous in part for its acrostic final paragraph, in which the first letters of each word spell out a message from beyond the grave. Another of his short stories, " Signs and Symbols ", features a character suffering from an imaginary illness called "Referential Mania", in which the affected perceives a world of environmental objects exchanging coded messages. Nabokov's stature as a literary critic
4025-420: Is founded largely on his four-volume translation of and commentary on Alexander Pushkin 's Eugene Onegin published in 1964. The commentary ends with an appendix titled Notes on Prosody , which has developed a reputation of its own. It stemmed from his observation that while Pushkin's iambic tetrameters had been a part of Russian literature for a fairly short two centuries, they were clearly understood by
4140-476: Is remembered as the founder of Wellesley's Russian department. The Nabokovs resided in Wellesley, Massachusetts , during the 1941–42 academic year. In September 1942, they moved to nearby Cambridge , where they lived until June 1948. Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944–45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. In 1945, he became a naturalized citizen of
4255-522: Is with pitfalls, could lend itself to hideous mistranslation. In the hands of a harmful drudge, the Russian version of Lolita would be entirely degraded and botched by vulgar paraphrases or blunders. So I decided to translate it myself." Nabokov was a proponent of individualism , and rejected concepts and ideologies that curtailed individual freedom and expression, such as totalitarianism in its various forms, as well as Sigmund Freud 's psychoanalysis . Poshlost , or as he transcribed it, poshlust ,
4370-503: The AIDS crisis and his collaboration with stakeholders worldwide emphasized his commitment to public health. Upon receiving outreach from Gordon Price , a co-founder of AIDS Vancouver , Popham traveled to Vancouver , on the west coast of Canada , offering his invaluable expertise. This pivotal partnership culminated in the inception of the inaugural AIDS Information Forum on March 12, 1983. Notably, Popham's knowledge shared during this forum
4485-630: The Carnegie Corporation , an organization that has supported more than 550 New York City arts and social service institutions since its inception in 2002, and which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg (along with 406 other arts and social service institutions). Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) moved to a new and expanded home consisting of 110,000 square feet (10,000 m ) of redesigned and renovated space at 446 West 33rd Street in Manhattan . At
4600-540: The David Geffen Foundation. In 1997 the organization moved into headquarters at the nine-story Tisch Building at 119 West 24 Street in the Chelsea neighborhood. The building underwent a $ 12.5 million renovation. It is named for Preston Robert Tisch and Joan Tisch . The couple donated $ 3.5 million for the project and Joan is on the GMHC board of directors. Weill-Cornell Medical Center opened
4715-548: The East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux , Switzerland. From 1948 to 1959, Nabokov was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University . His 1955 novel Lolita ranked fourth on Modern Library 's list of the 100 best 20th-century novels in 2007 and is considered one of the greatest works of 20th-century literature. Nabokov's Pale Fire , published in 1962, ranked 53rd on
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4830-510: The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene 's ad campaign "Never Just HIV," which used graphic images to warn people that an HIV diagnosis could lead to other comorbidities . Francisco Roque, then the director of community health, said the ad campaign "paints this picture of gay men as these sort of disease-ridden vessels." GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios called the ad "sensationalized" and added that it "misses
4945-586: The October Revolution one year later; this was the only house he ever owned. Nabokov's adolescence was the period in which he made his first serious literary endeavors. In 1916, he published his first book, Stikhi ( Poems ), a collection of 68 Russian poems. At the time he was attending Tenishev school in Saint Petersburg, where his literature teacher Vladimir Vasilievich Gippius had criticized his literary accomplishments. Some time after
5060-658: The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus . By 1984, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had requested GMHC's assistance in planning public conferences on AIDS. That same year, the human immunodeficiency virus was discovered by the French doctors Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier . Within two years, GMHC was assisting heterosexual men and women (see Dennis Levy ), hemophiliacs , intravenous drug users, and children. From 1987 until his death from AIDS in 1989, Doctor Barry Gingell served as
5175-517: The Stonewall Inn in 1969 when the Stonewall uprising began. He later wrote, "Ours may have been the first funny revolution." "When someone shouted 'Gay is good' in imitation of 'Black is beautiful', we all laughed... Then I caught myself foolishly imagining that gays might someday constitute a community rather than a diagnosis". White identifies as gay and is also an atheist , though he
5290-487: The University of Cambridge , one of the world's most prestigious universities, where he attended Trinity College and studied zoology and later Slavic and Romance languages . His examination results on the first part of the Tripos exam, taken at the end of his second year, were a starred first . He took the second part of the exam in his fourth year just after his father's death, and feared he might fail it. But his exam
5405-477: The "books that, I thought, changed my life when I read them", and has said, "Nabokov's English combines aching lyricism with dispassionate precision in a way that seems to render every human emotion in all its intensity but never with an ounce of schmaltz or soggy language". T. Coraghessan Boyle has said that "Nabokov's playfulness and the ravishing beauty of his prose are ongoing influences" on his writing. Bilingual author and critic Maxim D. Shrayer , who came to
5520-491: The "smartest, most compelling public health campaigns." In May 2010, GMHC celebrated the 25th anniversary of its annual fundraiser, AIDS Walk New York . GMHC had hoped to raise $ 5.3 million for the occasion and ended up raising $ 5.7 million. GMHC joined an open letter from several nonprofit organizations urging the FDA to approve Truvada for use as pre-exposure prophylaxis in 2011. GMHC partnered with GLAAD to denounce
5635-404: The 1990 International AIDS Conference in San Francisco, California in protest of the federal travel ban on people with HIV entering the United States. Though representatives from GMHC did not attend the official event, they did participate in a smaller conference, for people who had boycotted, which took place simultaneously in San Francisco. The Fox Broadcasting Company donated the proceeds from
5750-490: The Chelsea Center for Special Studies, in GMHC's building in 1997, in what was then described as the "first large-scale collaboration between a major New York City hospital and an AIDS social service agency." The center offered medical services to people with HIV, many of them referred from GMHC. Donna Summer headlined a fundraiser at Carnegie Hall that raised $ 400,000 for GMHC in 1998. GMHC supported SB4422-B,
5865-519: The FBI keeping a record of activist group ACT UP also claimed that the FBI kept a small file dedicated to GMHC. Broadway star Bernadette Peters made her Carnegie Hall debut with a fundraiser for the organization. GMHC began offering HIV testing and prevention counseling at its offices in 1997, at the David Geffen Center for HIV Prevention and Health Education after a $ 2.5 million gift from
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#17327801510125980-627: The French writers: Genet , Proust and Rimbaud . Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University . An annual prize given by Publishing Triangle is the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier ) de l' Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993. Edmund Valentine White mostly grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan , as
6095-410: The King of Naples (1978) was explicitly gay-themed and drew on his own life. From 1980 to 1981, White was a member of a gay writers' group, The Violet Quill , which met briefly during that period, and included Andrew Holleran and Felice Picano . White's autobiographic works are frank and unapologetic about his promiscuity and his HIV-positive status. In 1980, White brought out States of Desire ,
6210-782: The Nabokovs fled the advancing German troops, reaching the United States via the SS Champlain . Nabokov's brother Sergei did not leave France, and he died at the Neuengamme concentration camp on 9 January 1945. The Nabokovs settled in Manhattan , and Vladimir began volunteer work as an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History . Nabokov joined the staff of Wellesley College in 1941 as resident lecturer in comparative literature . The position, created specifically for him, provided an income and free time to write creatively and pursue his lepidoptery . Nabokov
6325-489: The Russian prosodists. On the other hand, he viewed the much older English iambic tetrameters as muddled and poorly documented. In his own words: I have been forced to invent a simple little terminology of my own, explain its application to English verse forms, and indulge in certain rather copious details of classification before even tackling the limited object of these notes to my translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin , an object that boils down to very little—in comparison to
6440-481: The U.S. as a refugee from the USSR, described reading Nabokov in 1987 as "my culture shock": "I was reading Nabokov and waiting for America." Boston Globe book critic David Mehegan wrote that Shrayer's Waiting for America "is one of those memoirs, like Nabokov's Speak, Memory , that is more about feeling than narrative." More recently, in connection with the publication of Shrayer's literary memoir Immigrant Baggage ,
6555-589: The United States. He served through the 1947–48 term as Wellesley's one-man Russian department, offering courses in Russian language and literature. His classes were popular, due as much to his unique teaching style as to the wartime interest in all things Russian. At the same time he was the de facto curator of lepidoptery at Harvard University 's Museum of Comparative Zoology . After being encouraged by Morris Bishop , Nabokov left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature at Cornell University , where he taught until 1959. Among his students at Cornell
6670-492: The airing of the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in London's Wembley Stadium to GMHC. GMHC debuted an HIV prevention subway campaign featuring gay and straight couples in 1994. GMHC admitted that the posters were "more explicit" than what they had produced in the past and featured animated condoms, lubricant and messages aimed towards sexually active youth, with the slogan "Young! Hot! Safe!" Staff at GMHC later said that
6785-426: The annual AIDS Walk New York fundraiser were spent on administrative costs, including rent, rather than direct services. GMHC issued a statement calling the report "grossly inaccurate" and later released a statement which said that "in a time of leadership transition we are vulnerable to the attacks of "anonymous sources." GMHC said that due to stigma from landlords, it had few options for relocating in 2011, meaning
6900-600: The author stored his collection of male blue butterfly genitalia. "Nabokov was a serious taxonomist," says museum staff writer Nancy Pick, author of The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History . "He actually did quite a good job at distinguishing species that you would not think were different—by looking at their genitalia under a microscope six hours
7015-458: The best-humored woman he had ever known. In June 1953, Nabokov and his family went to Ashland, Oregon . There he finished Lolita and began writing the novel Pnin . He roamed the nearby mountains looking for butterflies, and wrote a poem called Lines Written in Oregon . On 1 October 1953, he and his family returned to Ithaca, where he later taught the young writer Thomas Pynchon . After
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#17327801510127130-401: The book in his native language before making the final version, Speak, Memory (Nabokov first wanted to name it "Speak, Mnemosyne "). Of translating Lolita , Nabokov writes, "I imagined that in some distant future somebody might produce a Russian version of Lolita . I trained my inner telescope upon that particular point in the distant future and I saw that every paragraph, pock-marked as it
7245-576: The book was that Barber "had a very romantic vision of me. It was very flattering. He painted me as a brooding figure. I see myself as much more self-mocking and satirical. I just skimmed that biography. As Genet put it, I didn't want to end up resembling myself". From 1999 onwards, White became professor of creative writing in Princeton University 's Lewis Center for the Arts. White has received numerous awards and distinctions. Recipient of
7360-624: The character Vivian Darkbloom (an anagram of "Vladimir Nabokov"), who appears in both Lolita and Ada, or Ardor , and the character Blavdak Vinomori (another anagram of Nabokov's name) in King, Queen, Knave . Sirin is referenced as a different émigré author in his memoir and is also referenced in Pnin . Nabokov is noted for his complex plots, clever word play , daring metaphors, and prose style capable of both parody and intense lyricism. He gained both fame and notoriety with Lolita (1955), which recounts
7475-528: The critic and Stanley Kubrick biographer David Mikics wrote, "Shrayer writes like Nabokov's long lost cousin." Nabokov appears in W. G. Sebald 's 1993 novel The Emigrants . A crater on the planet Mercury was named after Nabokov in 2012. The song cycle "Sing, Poetry" on the 2011 contemporary classical album Troika comprises settings of Russian and English versions of three of Nabokov's poems by such composers as Jay Greenberg , Michael Schelle and Lev Zhurbin . Nabokov's interest in entomology
7590-435: The decision was "disturbing" and said the museum was practicing "real censorship and distortion of history. " In an opinion published in the New York Times, the museum's director Robert Macdonald said the museum and GMHC "decided that sexually explicit images would not be included in the exhibition" in order to present the story to the "widest possible audience." He added, "To characterize that decision as censorship demonstrates
7705-421: The exhibit, Jane Rossett and Jean Carlomusto alleged that the institution eliminated explicit sexual content, including depictions of sexual intimacy between gay men, from the exhibit, altering the meaning of the exhibit and the materials presented within. The materials included items documenting public health information campaigns about AIDS. Lawrence D. Mass , one of GMHC's founders, told the New York Times that
7820-406: The first English book his mother read to him was Misunderstood , by Florence Montgomery . Much to his patriotic father's disappointment, Nabokov could read and write in English before he could in Russian. In his memoir Speak, Memory , Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood. His ability to recall his past in vivid detail was a boon to him during his permanent exile, providing
7935-833: The first lectures that he had little interest in fraternizing with students, who would be known not by their name but by their seat number. The Russian literary critic Yuly Aykhenvald was an early admirer of Nabokov, citing in particular his ability to imbue objects with life: "he saturates trivial things with life, sense and psychology and gives a mind to objects; his refined senses notice colorations and nuances, smells and sounds, and everything acquires an unexpected meaning and truth under his gaze and through his words." The critic James Wood argues that Nabokov's use of descriptive detail proved an "overpowering, and not always very fruitful, influence on two or three generations after him", including authors such as Martin Amis and John Updike . While
8050-502: The forced preliminaries—namely, to a few things that the non-Russian student of Russian literature must know in regard to Russian prosody in general and to Eugene Onegin in particular. Nabokov's lectures at Cornell University , as collected in Lectures on Literature , reveal his controversial ideas concerning art. He firmly believed that novels should not aim to teach and that readers should not merely empathize with characters but that
8165-592: The forum, which took place only three days after the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal made breaking news. Participants included New York City comptroller John C. Liu , former comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. , speaker for the New York City Council Christine Quinn , New York City Council member Sal F. Albanese and former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, Jr. A 2013 DNAInfo report alleged that donations made to
8280-674: The great financial success of Lolita , Nabokov returned to Europe and devoted himself to writing. In 1961, he and Véra moved to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux , Switzerland, where he remained until the end of his life. From his sixth-floor quarters, he conducted his business and took tours to the Alps, Corsica, and Sicily to hunt butterflies. Nabokov died of bronchitis on 2 July 1977 in Montreux. His remains were cremated and buried at Clarens cemetery in Montreux. At
8395-617: The growing and complex needs of people affected by HIV/AIDS. In this 39th year of the epidemic, HIV continues to rise at alarming rates – locally and nationally – particularly among women, African Americans , Latinos and men who have sex with men . In 2010, GMHC expanded its "I Love My Boo" anti-stigma campaign into New York City subways . The ads featured Black and Latino same-sex couples embracing, holding hands and kissing and promoted HIV testing among gay men of color. The campaign, which had previously run in gay bars, received positive praise from journalist Kai Wright , who called it one of
8510-544: The illness shortly afterward). In 1984 in Paris, shortly after discovering he was HIV-positive, White joined the French HIV/AIDS organization, AIDES . During this period, he brought out his novel, Caracole (1985), which centers on heterosexual relationships. But he also maintained an interest in France and French literature, writing biographies of Jean Genet , Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud . He published Genet:
8625-703: The inaugural Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 1989, he is also the namesake of the organization's Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. In 2014, Edmund White was presented with the Bonham Centre Award from the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto , for his contributions to the advancement and education of issues around sexual identification. In his 2005 memoir My Lives , White cites Jean Genet , Marcel Proust and André Gide as influences, writing: "they convinced me that homosexuality
8740-401: The issue of " gay cancer " and to begin organizing efforts to raise money for research. In January 1982, Nathan Fain, Lawrence D. Mass , Paul Popham , Paul Rapoport and Edmund White again met with Larry Kramer at his home and founded Gay Men's Health Crisis. GMHC took its name from the fact that the earliest men who fell victim to AIDS in the early 1980s were gay . The first meeting
8855-705: The latter novel are recognizably based on well-known people from White's New York-centered literary and artistic milieu. From 1983 to 1990 White lived in France. He moved there initially for one year in 1983 via the Guggenheim Fellowship for writing he had received, but took such a liking to Paris "with its drizzle, as cool, grey and luxurious as chinchilla," (as he described it in his autobiographical novel The Farewell Symphony ) that he stayed there for longer. French philosopher Michel Foucault invited him for dinner on several occasions, though he dismissed White's concerns about HIV/AIDS (Foucault would die of
8970-495: The lively Russian community of Berlin that was more or less self-sufficient, staying on after it had disintegrated because he had nowhere else to go to. He knew little German. He knew few Germans except for landladies, shopkeepers, and immigration officials at the police headquarters." In 1922, Nabokov became engaged to Svetlana Siewert, but she broke the engagement off early in 1923 when her parents worried whether he could provide for her. In May 1923, he met Véra Evseyevna Slonim ,
9085-512: The lives of all affected." Founded in 1982, it is often billed as the "world's oldest AIDS service organization, " as well as the "nation's oldest HIV/AIDS service organization." In early 1981, reports began surfacing in San Francisco and New York City that a rare form of cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma was affecting young gay men. In response, 80 men gathered in New York writer Larry Kramer 's apartment on August 11, 1981, to discuss
9200-494: The mark in fairly and accurately representing what it's like to live with HIV/AIDS." The New York Public Library put together an exhibition, "Celebrating 100 Years," in 2011 that was put together to "show the depth and breadth" of the library's collection. The exhibition included condoms distributed by GMHC in the 1990s. While appearing on the fifth season The Celebrity Apprentice , comedian Lisa Lampanelli raised $ 130,000 for GMHC. In September 2013, GMHC announced that
9315-514: The novel. In 2010, Kitsch magazine, a student publication at Cornell, published a piece that focused on student reflections on his lectures and also explored Nabokov's long relationship with Playboy . Nabokov also wanted his students to describe the details of the novels rather than a narrative of the story and was very strict when it came to grading. As Edward Jay Epstein described his experience in Nabokov's classes, Nabokov made it clear from
9430-455: The novels he wrote in English. As a trilingual (also writing in French, see Mademoiselle O ) master, he has been compared to Joseph Conrad , but Nabokov disliked both the comparison and Conrad's work. He lamented to the critic Edmund Wilson , "I am too old to change Conradically"—which John Updike later called "itself a jest of genius". This lament came in 1941, when Nabokov had been an apprentice American for less than one year. Later, in
9545-464: The organization and its CEO, Dr. Marjorie Hill, had "mutually decided" that they would part ways and that she would leave her role. Subsequent reporting about Hill's departure alleged that the organization's board of directors fired Hill, apparently because Hill "angered clients and staff." After news of her departure, a group of AIDS activists and professionals in the AIDS community wrote an open letter in support of Hill, noting that her service to GMHC
9660-445: The organization received bomb threats specifically citing the campaign. GMHC employee James A. Fielding sued the organization alleging discrimination in 1994. Fielding sought $ 1.7 million in compensatory and punitive damages, claiming that he was not given a fair chance to apply for a role within GMHC, as leadership was afraid that, due to his HIV-positive status, he would have to call in sick. A 1995 New York Times report detailing
9775-484: The organization's most effective tools for sharing information about AIDS. He was named director of GMHC in 1982, helping create a more formal structure for the nascent organization, which had no funding or offices when he took on the role. GMHC operated out of a couple of rooms for offices in a rooming house at 318 West 22nd Street in Chelsea owned by Mel Cheren of West End Records . Popham's dedication to combating
9890-450: The organization's women's program. The decision to appoint Oliveira to the position was unanimous. In April 2000, GMHC released Men Like Us: The GMHC Complete Guide to Gay Men's Sexual, Physical and Emotional Well-Being , written by the organization's former communications director, Daniel Wolfe. The book included basic information about sex, sexual pleasure, as well as nutrition, exercise, communication with partners, and more. The book
10005-482: The party, which he called a "drug-free event." He continued, "Perhaps if he had attended the party, he might have a better sense of how this annual celebration contributes to the fight against AIDS ... As a person with AIDS, I am comforted to know that the money raised will be used to finance needed services, and hope that G.M.H.C. will not sacrifice those programs by discontinuing the Morning Party." GMHC pulled
10120-401: The plug after the 1998 fundraiser after one man died on Fire Island of an overdose of the drug gamma hydroxy butyrate (GHB) the evening before the party and 21 revelers were arrested for drug possession . In the year 2000, Ana Oliveira, a lesbian and an acupuncturist, became the first woman to become the organization's executive director. She had been an employee there since 1996 and founded
10235-399: The programs." Kramer resigned in 1983 due to his many disagreements with the other founders. From that time on, his public comments and posture toward GMHC were negative, if not hostile. Kramer's play The Normal Heart is a roman à clef of his involvement with the organization. On April 30, 1983, the GMHC sponsored the first major fund-raising event for AIDS – a benefit performance of
10350-614: The publication of Stikhi , Zinaida Gippius , renowned poet and first cousin of his teacher, told Nabokov's father at a social event, "Please tell your son that he will never be a writer." After the 1917 February Revolution , Nabokov's father became a secretary of the Russian Provisional Government in Saint Petersburg . After the October Revolution , the family fled the city for Crimea, at first not expecting to be away for very long. They lived at
10465-538: The rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran or Peru . It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all." The Harvard Museum of Natural History , which now contains the Museum of Comparative Zoology , still possesses Nabokov's "genitalia cabinet", where
10580-589: The recent loss of his country. It was in this city, in his moments of solitude, accompanied by King Lear , Le Morte d'Arthur , The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Ulysses , that Nabokov made the firm decision to become a Russian writer." In 1920, Nabokov's family moved to Berlin, where his father set up the émigré newspaper Rul' ("Rudder"). Nabokov followed them to Berlin two years later, after completing his studies at Cambridge. In March 1922, Russian monarchists Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork and Sergey Taboritsky shot and killed Nabokov's father in Berlin as he
10695-594: The relatively unspectacular tribe Polyommatini of the family Lycaenidae , has left this facet of his life little explored by most admirers of his literary works. He described the Karner blue . The genus Nabokovia was named after him in honor of this work, as were a number of butterfly and moth species (e.g., many species in the genera Madeleinea and Pseudolucia bear epithets alluding to Nabokov or names from his novels). In 1967, Nabokov commented: "The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside
10810-511: The same list. His memoir, Speak, Memory , published in 1951, is considered among the greatest nonfiction works of the 20th century, placing eighth on Random House 's ranking of 20th-century works. Nabokov was a seven-time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction . He also was an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems . Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899 Old Style ) in Saint Petersburg to
10925-431: The source of all power, money, happiness, and he was implacable and difficult. He was always spoken of in sexual terms, in the sense he left our mother for a much younger woman who was very sexy but had nothing else going for her. He was a famous womanizer. And he slept with my sister!" He has also stated: "Writing has always been my recourse when I've tried to make sense of my experience or when it's been very painful. When I
11040-400: The time of his death, he was working on a novel titled The Original of Laura . Véra and Dmitri, who were entrusted with Nabokov's literary executorship , ignored Nabokov's request to burn the incomplete manuscript and published it in 2009. Nabokov is known as one of the leading prose stylists of the 20th century; his first writings were in Russian, but he achieved his greatest fame with
11155-718: The time of the announcement, co-founder Larry Kramer expressed disappointment with the move. GMHC expanded its wide range of services for over 100,000 New Yorkers affected by HIV/AIDS. These services include health and nutrition education, legal, housing and mental health support, vocational training and case management. With a new state-of-the-art kitchen and larger dining room, free hot meals will be served to more clients. The Keith Haring Food Pantry Program will increase its capacity to provide grocery bags and nutrition counseling to more people in need. During GMHC's move into their new building they were met with discrimination from prospective landlords. Many did not understand what GMHC
11270-413: Was 15 years old, I wrote my first (unpublished) novel about being gay, at a time when there were no other gay novels. So I was really inventing a genre, and it was a way of administering a therapy to myself, I suppose." White declined admission to Harvard University 's Chinese doctoral program in favor of following a lover to New York. There he freelanced for Newsweek and spent seven years working as
11385-517: Was a Russian-American novelist , poet, translator, and entomologist . Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin , where he met his wife . He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on
11500-553: Was a descendant of the composer Carl Heinrich Graun . Vladimir was the family's eldest and favorite child. He had four younger siblings: Sergey , Olga, Elena, and Kirill. Sergey was killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 after publicly denouncing Hitler's regime. Writer Ayn Rand recalled Olga (her close friend at Stoiunina Gymnasium) as a supporter of constitutional monarchy who first awakened Rand's interest in politics. Elena, who in later years became Vladimir's favorite sibling, published her correspondence with him in 1985. She
11615-648: Was a self-proclaimed " White Russian ", and was, from its inception, a strong opponent of the Soviet government that came to power following the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. In a poem he wrote as a teenager in 1917, he described Lenin's Bolsheviks as "grey rag-tag people". Throughout his life, Nabokov would remain committed to the classical liberal political philosophy of his father, and equally opposed Tsarist autocracy , communism , and fascism . Nabokov's father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov,
11730-483: Was able to escape Hitler's Germany only with the help of Russian Jewish émigrés who still had grateful memories of his family's defense of Jews in Tsarist times. Gay Men%27s Health Crisis The GMHC (formerly Gay Men's Health Crisis ) is a New York City –based non-profit , volunteer-supported and community-based AIDS service organization whose mission statement is to "end the AIDS epidemic and uplift
11845-400: Was an important source for Nabokov's biographers. Nabokov spent his childhood and youth in Saint Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra near Siverskaya , south of the city. His childhood, which he called "perfect" and "cosmopolitan", was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. He related that
11960-402: Was and how they offered services to the community and those sick with HIV/AIDS. Even when GMHC found a place to live there were several restrictions placed upon by the landlord. A major one was that GMHC couldn't perform any sort of medical procedures on the premises. This forced the GMHC clinic to not move along with the rest of GMHC. The new location enabled GMHC to expand its services to meet
12075-403: Was crucial to the development of the modern novel because it led to a resurrection of love, a profound skepticism about the naturalness of gender roles and a revival of the classical tradition of same-sex love that dominated Western poetry and prose until the birth of Christ". His favorite living writers in the early 1970s were Vladimir Nabokov and Christopher Isherwood . White was present at
12190-586: Was future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , who later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer. Nabokov wrote Lolita while traveling on the butterfly-collection trips in the western U.S. that he undertook every summer. Véra acted as "secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator and bibliographer; his agent, business manager, legal counsel and chauffeur; his research assistant, teaching assistant and professorial understudy"; when Nabokov attempted to burn unfinished drafts of Lolita , Véra stopped him. He called her
12305-520: Was held in the Church of St. Joseph in Greenwich Village . They organized the formal tax-exempt entity, which was incorporated on June 30, 1982. At the time, it was the largest volunteer AIDS organization in the world. Paul Popham was chosen as the president . Rodger McFarlane began a crisis counseling hotline that originated on his own home telephone, which ultimately became one of
12420-661: Was immortalized on film, signifying a momentous stride in the nascent endeavors to tackle the epidemic . Larry Kramer wrote that by the time of McFarlane's death, "the GMHC is essentially what he started: crisis counseling, legal aid, volunteers, the buddy system, social workers" as part of an organization that serves more than 15,000 people affected by HIV and AIDS. In an interview with The New York Times after McFarlane's death in May 2009, Kramer described how "single-handedly Rodger took this struggling ragtag group of really frightened and mostly young men, found us an office and set up all
12535-553: Was inspired by books by Maria Sibylla Merian he found in the attic of his family's country home in Vyra. Throughout an extensive career of collecting, he never learned to drive a car, and depended on his wife to take him to collecting sites. During the 1940s, as a research fellow in zoology , he was responsible for organizing the butterfly collection of Harvard University 's Museum of Comparative Zoology . His writings in this area were highly technical. This, combined with his specialty in
12650-412: Was marked second-class . His final examination result also ranked second-class, and his BA was conferred in 1922. Nabokov later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write several works, including the novels Glory and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight . At Cambridge, one journalist wrote in 2014, "the coats-of-arms on the windows of his room protected him from the cold and from the melancholy over
12765-456: Was on the reading list for Hawkes's writing students at Brown University. "A writer who truly and greatly sustains us is Vladimir Nabokov," Hawkes said in a 1964 interview. Several authors who came to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s have also cited Nabokov's work as a literary influence. Aleksandar Hemon has acknowledged the latter's impact on his writing. Pulitzer Prize -winning novelist Michael Chabon listed Lolita and Pale Fire among
12880-644: Was one of 61 nonfiction books nominated for a Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association . The award eventually went to Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet . The Museum of the City of New York debuted an exhibit, "Gay Men's Health Crisis: 20 Years Fighting for People with HIV/AIDS," a collaboration between the museum and GMHC in April 2001. Curators of
12995-529: Was one of the most outspoken defenders of Jewish rights in the Russian Empire , continuing a family tradition that had been led by his own father, Dmitry Nabokov, who as Tsar Alexander II 's justice minister had blocked the interior minister from passing antisemitic measures. That family strain continued in Vladimir Nabokov, who fiercely denounced antisemitism in his writings; in the 1930s, he
13110-529: Was reared as a Christian Scientist . He discovered he was HIV-positive in 1985. However, he is a "non-progressor", one of the small percentage of cases that have not led to AIDS. He is in a long-term open relationship with the American writer Michael Carroll , living with him from 1995 onward. They married in November 2013. In June 2012, Carroll reported that White was making a "remarkable" recovery after suffering two strokes in previous months. He has also had
13225-432: Was shielding their target, Pavel Milyukov , a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party -in-exile. Shortly after his father's death, Nabokov's mother and sister moved to Prague. Nabokov drew upon his father's death repeatedly in his fiction. On one interpretation of his novel Pale Fire , an assassin kills the poet John Shade when his target is a fugitive European monarch. Nabokov stayed in Berlin, where he had become
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