Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0000286, Fri, 8 Jul 1994 08:20:39 -0700

Subject
Nabokov, Wilson, etc. (fwd)
Date
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Date: Thu, 7 Jul 1994 14:56:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>

Preoccupation with disagreements and squabbles among the famous ones is
obviously a very human one, and even astute critics are rarely above it.
But do we really have to proclaim a winner in such fights? Especially
since we are not privileged to know all the details and motifs, and can
only speculate? In other words, even if we cannot rise above our
all-too-human curiosity when it comes to scandals and fights, and even if
we cannot help but take sides, there is still a huge distance between
that and minimizing or vilifying the opponents of our favorites, which,
unfortunately, happens all too often in Nabokov scholarship.

Both Wilson and Fitzgerald are complex and fascinating men or artists,
regardless of their relationship to or with Nabokov, and even regardless
of what Nabokov thought of them at different times -- it seems silly even
to state that, and yet I often feel that this point is hopelessly lost in
many of the estimates of the two (particularly Wilson) when those
estimates come from Nabokov people.

Galya Diment