Scrolling through the online auction catalogue for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's personal library I found a lot of five Nabokovs that surprisingly included his lesser-known chess novel, The Defense. The discovery created a spark of connection that was no less real for being imagined. In another lot, touchingly, there was a volume titled The Widow's Handbook. If a public figure is measured by her library, Ginsburg's death was a great loss indeed.
From the auction catalog: "At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write," Ginsburg wrote in a 2016 op-ed. "Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea."
(Update: The lot went for around $7,000.)
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