Subject: RE: Nabokoviana
From: Mark Bennett <[email-masked]>
To: "'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 13:50:13 -0700

It's interesting that Boyd lost his heart to Nabokov; from what I recall,
there is little evidence of  VN's influence in Boyd's novels. Kingsley Amis
and Evelyn Waugh, certainly, but VN?  In any event one of the funniest
novels of the last 25 years is Boyd's "A Good Man In Africa" which is
absolutely hilarious, comparable to "Lucky Jim" and "Time for a Tiger."

-----Original Message-----
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, October 23, 2000 1:36 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Nabokoviana

1.The 15 Oct  2000  NYTBR offers Brit. novelist, William Boyd's review (p.
9) of _Loving Graham Greene_ by Gloria Emerson. Boyd open:
    "It's very easy to develop a healthy obsession with a favorite author --
I have a couple of lengthy trysts going on with Cyril Connolly and William
Gerhardie -- though my heart belongs to Nabokov -- and bexcause the
relationship between writer and reader is so unusually intimate ..., it's
also very easy for that obsession to become a little unhinged."

Passing thought.William Gerhardie, born of an English family living in
Petersburg, was a co-eval of VN. Leaving Russia round the time of the
revolution he became a novelist and in his later years something of a cult
figure. His memoir is called _Memoirs of a Polyglot_.  His archives are at
Cambridge (UK) and in the U.S. and might prove interesting  as a small
sidelight on VN.

2. Frederic Raphael (ho wrote the hostile review of ten new Atlas Bio of
Saul Bellow) was, I see, the script writer for Kubrick's last film, _Eyes
Wide Shut_ that has been playing on HBO lately.