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[Fwd: Nabokoviana]
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Mark Bennett wrote:
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> 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."
>
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EDITOR's NOTE. Yes, the disparity struck me too. I don't see any VN in Kingsley
Amis but rather (and quite strongly) in Martin Amis. Perhaps the most incongrous
cases of anti-influence are Bobbie Ann Mason whose PhD dissertation was on ADA and
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer who did the first doctoral dissertation on VN. Hard to
imagine styles more at odds with VN's.