I was repatriated from Brunei in 1958 to be told that I probably had an inoperable brain tumour and might, with luck, live for a year. I was determined to live long enough to read two books, both of which appeared in England in 1959 - Nabokov's Lolita and Ellmann's biography of Joyce. Whether the prognosis was founded on an error of diagnosis or the books had a profoundly therapeutic value I shall never know; I know only that I have lived long enough to read both many times. Twenty-three years ago Nabokov seemed to be an ageing disciple of Joyce: now we know that is literary ancestor was the Bely who wrote Petersburg, and that Russian novelists were playing with symbolism as early as the first Bloomsday. But it would have seemed reasonable to find Nabokov among the innumerable artists with whom Joyce shared a Paris exile. He was not in the first edition of the biography but he is here now. Nabokov proposed a lecture on Pushkin, and Joyce, fearing that nobody would turn up, turned up himself to ensure that the young Russian had at least one audient. This is a newly unearthed instance of Joyce's kindness, not in the least incompatible with an intense egoism.

2) Martin Amis talked about Nabokov and Joyce and the rating of authors on the occasion of Nabokov's hundredth birthday.
audio: http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/25/specials/nabokov.html
transcript: http://martinamis.albion.edu/amisnabokov.htm
Disturbingly enough, Amis recycled his rhetoric a few months ago in praise of . . . Saul Bellow.

Best regards,
Ludger Tolksdorf

"D. Barton Johnson" wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sergey Karpukhin" <shrewd@irk.ru>

> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (64
lines) ------------------

> Joyce, to my mind, is artistically on a par with Nabokov. They both of
them
> created a subtle and elaborate art. That said, Joyce is very different
from
> VN. One of the differences is perhaps that the Irish writer was more of a
> mythologizer than Nabokov. And I think it was Martin Amis who contrasted
> Nabokov's inventive solicitude towards his reader and Joyce's indifference
> towards his (Martin Amis then concluded that Nabokov was the greatest
> novelist of the 20th century). Besides, their writerly temperaments, in my
> opinion, are diametrical opposites, in that Joyce comes from words to
> things, and VN to words from things. Joyce was champion and justifier of
the
> commonplace and the ordinary, while Nabokov glorified the individual and
the
> extraordinary.
>
> From my small academic experience, however, I know that Joyce has a
greater
> reputation than Nabokov, at least at Russian universities in eastern
> Siberia. And at the same time in the same milieu Nabokov is incomparably
> more widely read than Joyce. Partly this can be accounted for by Joyce's
> inaccessibile style and Nabokov's ready Russianness (generally speaking,
it
> is easier to read LOLITA and DAR than ULYSSES). Another curious thing is
> that both Nabokov and Joyce came to be regularly published in Russia in
the
> early 90s.
>
> Sergey

> PS In my edition of Richard Ellmann's JAMES JOYCE (OUP, 1965) there is no
> reference to Nabokov at all (e.g. his letter to Joyce with the proposition
> to translate ULYSSES into Russian, their meeting in Paris). Can anyone
tell
> me whether it's been corrected in the 1985 revised edition? Thanks.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
> To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 6:12 AM
> Subject: Fw: Joyce Versus VN
>
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Dane Gill" <pennyparkerpark@hotmail.com>
> > > ----------------- Message requiring your approval (15
> > lines) ------------------
> > > Greetings
> > > keeping with the recent post concerning Joyce I'd like to pose a few
> > > questions...make a few remarks. VN is always being compared to Joyce,
> but
> > > never really considered his equal; in every list ever made Ulysses
> always
> > > "outranks" Lolita. I always get the feeling that critics are saying VN
> is
> > > good...really good...but not the best. I was hoping some could give me
> > your
> > > opinions on whether Joyce actually harnessed the art of writing and
> > language
> > > better than VN. I realize this is a matter of a opinion, but I mean
from
> a
> > > critical p.o.v was VN up to par with Joyce?
> > > Dane
> > >
>
>
>