Dickstein was probably ventriloquizing Wilson.  Wilson applied this adjective to VN's work  a 
couple of times, I think.  Here he is 8/131/44 on the Gogol book:    “The best parts are brilliant 
(the exposition of poshlost’ perfect and valuable).  It does seem to me, though, that in some 
connections you’ve gone out of your way to be rather silly and perverse about the subject.”
  Of course, the adjective is frequently applied to Nabokov's writing as well as to the topics he 
writes about.  And for good reason.  The word and concept are crucial to an understanding of why 
Nabokov continues to offend and excite.  Nabokov doesn't seem to have been offended by the (near) 
application of the word to him -- "almost perverse delight" --in a BBC interview (SO 11).  How 
readers and scholars  of Nabokov use this word (appreciatively or disapprovingly) is often a 
marker of whether their stakes are primarilly aesthetic or ethical -- and whether the writer is 
speaking about art or behavior in the everyday world.

Eric Naiman
Chair, Department of Comparative Literature
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-2580