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Nabokov & President Johnson (fwd)
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From: Ole Nyegaard <nyegaard@lite.dk>
I must protest against a statement like this:"Any man who sends a telegram to President Johnson in the
heat of the Vietnam War to tell him to keep up the good work likely
wouldn't fret over a Bush presidency."
The telegram should also be seen in the light of President Johnson's domestic policy, cf. Vladimir Nabokov the American Years (Vintage ed. 1993, p. 503) where Brian Boyd writes: "As pleased with President Johnson's Vietnam policy as with his civil rights legislation, he sent the president a telegram at the time of his gall-bladder operation wishing him a "speedy return to the admirable work you are accomplising".
President Johnson wasn't so bad as presidents go - just think of some of his colleagues (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the Bushes!). The political landscape was a whole lot different in the sixties - it is simply too easy to judge any man's political views nearly forty years later, not to mention the views of someone who has suffered heavy personal losses as a result of the two most disgusting regimes in the twentieth century. Nabokov's support of any resistance against the threat of communism isn't synonymous with condoning atrocities comitted in the Vietnam War (the use of Agent Orange and napalm bombs, slaughter of civilians, etc.).
I do think Nabokov would fret over a president who supports the death penalty; remember this is the author who wrote: "...Fyodor recalled his father saying that innate in every man is the feeling of something insuperably abnormal about the death penalty..." (The Gift, Penguin1981, p.187); and this is also the aesthete who links his aesthetics with concern for his fellow beings and describes "aesthetic bliss" as a "sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm" ( "On a Book Entitled Lolita" in The Annotated Lolita,Penguin1991).
I don't care whether Bush is reading Dostoyevsky or not, had Flaubert made an entry in his Dictionnaire des idées reçues with the heading "Russian literature" it would probably have said below "See Dostoyevsky" And then if you looked under Dostoyevsky it would have said "the epitome of Russian literature" - in other words: the notion of Dostoyevsky has become a cliché.
All the best
Ole Nyegaard, Århus, Denmark.
I must protest against a statement like this:"Any man who sends a telegram to President Johnson in the
heat of the Vietnam War to tell him to keep up the good work likely
wouldn't fret over a Bush presidency."
The telegram should also be seen in the light of President Johnson's domestic policy, cf. Vladimir Nabokov the American Years (Vintage ed. 1993, p. 503) where Brian Boyd writes: "As pleased with President Johnson's Vietnam policy as with his civil rights legislation, he sent the president a telegram at the time of his gall-bladder operation wishing him a "speedy return to the admirable work you are accomplising".
President Johnson wasn't so bad as presidents go - just think of some of his colleagues (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the Bushes!). The political landscape was a whole lot different in the sixties - it is simply too easy to judge any man's political views nearly forty years later, not to mention the views of someone who has suffered heavy personal losses as a result of the two most disgusting regimes in the twentieth century. Nabokov's support of any resistance against the threat of communism isn't synonymous with condoning atrocities comitted in the Vietnam War (the use of Agent Orange and napalm bombs, slaughter of civilians, etc.).
I do think Nabokov would fret over a president who supports the death penalty; remember this is the author who wrote: "...Fyodor recalled his father saying that innate in every man is the feeling of something insuperably abnormal about the death penalty..." (The Gift, Penguin1981, p.187); and this is also the aesthete who links his aesthetics with concern for his fellow beings and describes "aesthetic bliss" as a "sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm" ( "On a Book Entitled Lolita" in The Annotated Lolita,Penguin1991).
I don't care whether Bush is reading Dostoyevsky or not, had Flaubert made an entry in his Dictionnaire des idées reçues with the heading "Russian literature" it would probably have said below "See Dostoyevsky" And then if you looked under Dostoyevsky it would have said "the epitome of Russian literature" - in other words: the notion of Dostoyevsky has become a cliché.
All the best
Ole Nyegaard, Århus, Denmark.