Subject
Birthday Tributes
From
Date
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From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
For my centennial tribute to Nabokov, I would like to borrow someone
else's, which is among my true favorites. It's Julian Moynahan's, as
it appeared in the Newman-&-Appel-edited _TriQuarterly_ commemorating VN's
70th birthday when VN was still, of course, very much alive. Few tributes
to VN since have matched Moynahan's in its appreciative exhilaration:
"LOLITA was, after all, from the pen of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov,
of Vyra Estate, St. Petersburg, and all those later domiciles in Germany,
England, France and America that lie westward of his Eden. I began to
see that the main thoroughfare of the American novel was going to be
torn up by LOLITA just as though it had been hit by flood and fire, that
all the rules and recipes for American fiction -- merciful heaven! --
were going into the furnace to be changed and renewed by a Great
Russian. In truth, I only guessed a little of this at the time. Mainly I
was content to lurk with my much-thumbed copy of a hot book in two volumes
and wait for the huge change in the American literary weather
that would soon move in from an easterly direction. Yay! Vee Vee! Yay!
Hurricane Lolita!"
Happy 100, Nabokov!
Galya Diment
For my centennial tribute to Nabokov, I would like to borrow someone
else's, which is among my true favorites. It's Julian Moynahan's, as
it appeared in the Newman-&-Appel-edited _TriQuarterly_ commemorating VN's
70th birthday when VN was still, of course, very much alive. Few tributes
to VN since have matched Moynahan's in its appreciative exhilaration:
"LOLITA was, after all, from the pen of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov,
of Vyra Estate, St. Petersburg, and all those later domiciles in Germany,
England, France and America that lie westward of his Eden. I began to
see that the main thoroughfare of the American novel was going to be
torn up by LOLITA just as though it had been hit by flood and fire, that
all the rules and recipes for American fiction -- merciful heaven! --
were going into the furnace to be changed and renewed by a Great
Russian. In truth, I only guessed a little of this at the time. Mainly I
was content to lurk with my much-thumbed copy of a hot book in two volumes
and wait for the huge change in the American literary weather
that would soon move in from an easterly direction. Yay! Vee Vee! Yay!
Hurricane Lolita!"
Happy 100, Nabokov!
Galya Diment