Signs and Symbols - Vladimir Nabokov
Event Details
“I’m posting this LitSalon Short as a ‘taster’ for anyone considering joining me for the full study of Vladimir Nabokov’s notorious 1955 masterpiece Lolita, starting on 17 September. Participants in this single meeting will also get a feel for my facilitation style.”
Nancy Goldstein
In this LitSalon Short we’ll be discussing Signs and Symbols (1948), one of Nabokov’s shortest and most highly regarded stories. It’s a simple tale about ageing Belarusian immigrant parents visiting a mentally ill son who has been confined in a sanatorium for years with “referential mania” — the conviction that the natural world is speaking to him, and about him, in a coded language.
Or is it? What is Nabokov up to here, luring the reader into a narrative peppered with precisely the kinds of signs and symbols that encourage the son’s mania?
As for Lolita. I’m convinced that now more than ever it is time to read Nabokov’s masterpiece. The man who famously described himself as “an American writer, born in Russia” understands his adopted country as only an immigrant can.
Born into Russian nobility, Nabokov fled for his life twice: first escaping the 1917 Revolution for Berlin and Paris, and then, in 1940, fleeing Nazi-era Paris for New York City alongside his Jewish wife, Véra. A respected lepidopterist, Nabokov spent years working at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.
The immigrant, the scientist, and the novelist brought all he knew about camouflage, metamorphosis, mimicry, migration and classification to his writing.
Lolita combines Nabokov’s keen observations of the new, post-WWII superpower that is late 1940s America with his scalpel-like dexterity with the English language.
One of the world’s most banned books? Yes.
A savage send-up of a country awash in Norman Rockwell imagery and pop psychology? A land where clueless elites become intellectually complicit in a world that infantilises adults while sexualising children? Yes.
Narrated through the notoriously unreliable perspective of one Humbert Humbert, aka Paedophile-in-Chief? Yes.
Hilarious and infuriating by turns, but always mesmerising? Yes.
Our eight meeting study of Lolita begins on Thursday 17 September 2026
JOINING DETAILS:
- Single session LitSalon Short on Vladimir Nabokov’s Signs and Symbols led by Dr Nancy Goldstein (all registrants will receive from Nancy a copy of the story as Nabokov intended it to be read).
- Thursday 6 August 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time), live on Zoom
- ‘LitSalon Shorts’ are single-session studies (usually slightly shorter than a typical Salon study meeting) in which a facilitator shares with the wider Salon community their enthusiasm for an aspect of literature or culture.
- ‘Shorts’ are offered free-of-charge, but numbers are limited so please use the booking form below to reserve a place. Although there is no fee for this Short, Nancy asks you to consider making a donation – perhaps the price of your last G&T or flat white? – to José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, which feeds hungry people in war and emergency zones all over the world, from Gaza and Ukraine to Pakistan and areas struggling with natural disasters.
