Speak, Memory--Ch. 15

"Whenever I start to think of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love--from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter--to monstrously remote points of the universe." --Vladimir Nabokov, page 296

I find it kind of odd that Nabokov waits until the last chapter to introduce the reader to the "you" that he has been referring to throughout the novel, his wife, but also fitting, too. I guess he leaves the story of his wife and child to the end because he views as an ongoing story, whereas the rest of his memories are for the most part "over" and in the past. He is still living out his life with them. I would like to know more about the love affair that eventually led to marriage for him, since he goes into such detail about some of his other romances. But maybe he purposely leaves that story to the imagination--he doesn't want to lump it with the other moments in his life; he wants to retain the "specialness" of those moments. Either way, I find his description of love and raising a child beautiful. It's beautiful, and yet not sappy at all. He really found an original, real way of talking about the stuff of Lifetime movies and greeting cards. He was writing in a less commercialized time, granted, but I think this is a testament to his abilities as a skilled writer. I'd like to read more about his life, if he has published another volume of his life.