Quiz Bowl Practice: Literature (Vladimir Nabokov)

One of these author's characters receives an aquamarine bowl at a \"house-heating\" party where he is fired by Dr. Hagen. A character is misled by a magazine that misprints \"mountain\" as \"fountain\" in a story about a woman's near-death experience in one of his novels, while another features a recurring motif in which a hotel where the main characters sleep together and another character's play are among the things called a variant of \"The (*) Enchanted Hunter\". This author who wrote about an employee of Waindell College in Pnin also created Charles Kinbote, who believes himself to be the King of Zembla and provides commentary on a 999-line poem by John Shade. For 10 points, name this author of Pale Fire who wrote about Humbert Humbert in Lolita.

At one point in this novel, the main character considers drowning his wife in a lake, not knowing that Jean Farlow is watching them. This novel's protagonist has a mother who died in accident tersely described by the parenthetical phrase \"picnic, lightning\". In this novel, Valeria cheats on the protagonist with a taxi driver. In this novel, a motel at which two characters stay after leaving camp share its name with a play for which the title character auditions in school. That play, \"The Enchanted Hunters,\" was written by Clare Quilty, who is shot by this novel's protagonist. For 10 points, identify this novel, the journal of Humbert Humbert's obsession with the title \"nymphet,\" written by Vladimir Nabokov.

One character in this work marks a passage about snubbing in a volume of Proust and gives it as a gift to a character who did not invite him to a birthday party. One scene in this novel intercuts a scene of two characters flipping channels on the TV with a scene of those characters' daughter returning home from a blind date and drowning. While suffering a heart attack, one character in this novel has a vision of a white fountain. One of this novel's sections begins and possibly ends with the death of a waxwing bird that flies into a windowpane. This novel's main thread is interrupted by descriptions of the approach of the assassin Jakob Gradus and suggestions that the narrator is the exiled king of Zembla. For 10 points, name this extended commentary by Charles Kinbote on the title 999-line poem by John Shade, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov.

The narrator of this work learns a match trick from General Kuropatkin and is taught art by Dobuzhinski. In this book, a Polish medical student bicycles off to have an affair with a married woman twelve miles away; that student, Max, later courts an Irish governess. Chapter twelve is devoted to the narrator's love affair with Tamara, and chapter five focuses on the French governess Cecile Miauton. Other prominent women in this work include the narrator's love Colette and his mother Elena, and it features a passage describing timelessness while standing among exotic butterflies. The last chapter of this reworking of Conclusive Evidence mentions the author's love of chess and follows the author around Berlin and Paris while accompanied by his son Dmitri and wife Vera. For 10 points, name this autobiography by Vladimir Nabokov.

The narrator of this work compares The Doubtful Asphodel to his own life after finding out about his brother's affair with Nina Lecerf. For 10 points, name this novel by Vladimir Nabokov in which V. tries to write a biography of his novelist brother, the title character.