J. Aisenberg re to Khrushcheva and Studdard: clearly for the woman to have made remarks like those above about Nabokov's contempt for common folks, as opposed to say "recieved wisdom", seems like the mark of a shallow reader. And Nabokov's contempt for the tradition of socially minded literature (itself a complicated matter) was, I thought, a healthy response to those solemn types who go around
putting all sorts of "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" on everything and everybody, types embarrassed that literature might be fun or amusing, that it might not seem to be "respectably employed"; who inist the only serious literature builds houses for the homeless and frees the world of slavery, itself a kind of grim ignoble slavery (it's funny that Nabokov's liberated view of art should somehow have been turned around by so many concerned critics and made to seem constrictive and inhuman, when it's plaster the great busts and frowning sanctimony he was fleeing). "Heartless"? Poor Dolores Haze is hardly the invention a heartless arrogant brute. Sure Nabokov was vain and liked to air his airs, but it was harmless enough, and what kind of good artist doesn't have an inflated ego: in the the world of hard knocks and harsh lessons one soon discovers that if you don't tart up your own accomplishments no
one else is going to. K's taking Nabokov to task for his physical cowardice and flogging him with his survival of history, unlike Mandelshtam, is particularly annoying and offensive. Its the kind of dubious definition of courage which has needlessly destroyed so many valuable lives. K seems constitutionally incapable of understanding the courage of Nabokov's thought and art and butterflies, the intregity of which he dedicated his life to, even when he was practically starving to death. Unlike Studdard I think its great fun to read Nabokov taking pot shots at "great" writers. As to Dostoyevsky, I was surprised to find when I read N.'s lecture on The Brother's Karamozov that he actually liked it more than I did! Hysteria and rabid anti-semitism don't make for an appetizing read. I loved Joseph Heller's novel Catch Twenty-Two, but Nabokov called it type-writer's diarrhea; I think the
novel's a classic but I still laughed, just the way I did when read Heller's book.
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