His memoir was initially published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence, though that choice proved problematic. But Speak, Memory, we learn in Nabokov’s foreword, wasn’t the book’s first name. The sly illusion in Nabokov’s memoir resides in the very title, Speak, Memory, which evokes the idea of an earnest scribe waiting for the mythical Greek goddess Mnemosyne to talk so that he can scrupulously transcribe the past. The work that had made Nabokov a lucrative author and ensured his financial security was-you guessed it-his controversial novel Lolita, which became an international sensation in 1955 with its tale of a shrewd pedophile’s relationship with his 12-year-old stepdaughter. He pronounced the memoir “a dismal flop” after its release, lamenting that it brought him “fame but little money.” Perhaps no one would be more surprised at the book’s longevity than Nabokov himself. That edition is 50 years old this year, still in print after half a century, and still attracting new readers. Updike was writing in 1966, the year that the definitive version of Speak, Memory, subtitled An Autobiography Revisited, was published. inspired by an atheist’s faith in the magic of simile and the sacredness of lost time, Nabokov makes of his past a brilliant icon-bejewelled, perspectiveless, untouchable.”

“Nabokov has never written English better than in these reminiscences never has he written so sweetly,” he declared. Vladimir Nabokov was among them.” After closing the pages of Speak, Memory, John Updike, no slouch himself as a prose stylist, was carried away. Only a fortunate few are able to reimagine their lives, to find themes and patterns that explain a life, in the way successful autobiography requires.

“Those who possess the one are frequently devoid of the other, and vice versa. “To write superior autobiography one requires not only literary gifts, which are obtainable with effort, but an intrinsically interesting life, which is less frequently available,” literary critic Joseph Epstein once observed.

Rosenblatt is far from alone in hailing Speak, Memory as a gem. He was referring to the classic account by Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) of his idyllic Russian childhood in a family of colorful aristocrats, the 1917 Bolshevik revolution that banished him to exile, and the path that would eventually lead him to live in the United States.

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov