Another short one, we revere this story for its ability to turn every tiny detail into a portentous disaster, not to mention the fact that it’s penned in Nabokov’s effortlessly gorgeous, silvery prose. An old Jewish couple goes to visit their son in the mental hospital, only to be turned away because he has attempted to kill himself. And that’s it, really. They go home and look though a photo album, eat some jam. The phone rings. But the whole thing is, perhaps, both a comment on the nature of insanity and the nature of the short story itself, with all its rules and strangeness and banality. And all its symbols, of course.