In a message dated 23/11/2004 20:21:54 GMT Standard Time, chtodel@cox.net writes:

"Conjectured" by whom? I recognize none of my father's traits here except his genius. Of course he may have been preoccupied with his writing as opposed to faculty meetings, or the kind of boozy "interaction" some writers have been famous for, but he is remembered for the dashing, witty figure he cut on private and public occasions, and for the kind of interaction that counts most -- with his students, audiences, interviewers, and family. He was anything but clumsy and awkward, but a graceful tennis and soccer player, and precise in his movements, say, when working under the microscope on miniature lepidopterological organs. Repetitive? Of course -- genius is, above all, discipline. Restricted interests? It was his wealth of interests and knowledge that enabled him to write with Nabokovian richness.
 
I have come across this dim-witted diagnosis before. It accompanies the low-brow notion that, to be considered sane and healthy, one must fit some kind of moronic mould, while genius is, by definition, deviant.


As a psychotherapist, I endorse one hundred per cent Dmitri Nabokov's dismissal of this absurd, defamatory and, as he says, "dim-witted" "diagnosis".

Anthony Stadlen