[...] I think, too, that your invented country has not served you particularly well... Beside the actual Nazi Germany and the actual Stalinist Russia, the adventures of your unfortunate professor have the air of an unpleasant burlesque. I never believed in him much from the beginning, was never moved by the wife and the son; but I thought you were going eventually to turn him inside out, take the whole thing apart and show that your ideas of injustice and tragedy were purely subjective, or something of the sort. ( I'm sorry that you gave up the idea of having your hero confront his maker.) As it is, what you are left with on your hands is a satire of events so terrible that they really can't be satirized - because in order to satirize anything you have to make it morse than it is. "

Edmund Wilson's criticism of Bend Sinister seems to be marred by his disappointment and his disagreements with Nabokov concerning communism in Russia and Lenin, and we can feel his "poison." And yet, he set down two important points: the adventures of Adam Krug often "have the air of an unpleasant burlesque." (which I think was intended as such by VN), and, the most important one: "a satire of events so terrible that they can't really be satirized." This aspect describes something which I recently observed in relation to Tarantino's 2009 movie, "Inglorious Basterds" (with the outstanding performance of Christoph Walz and the initial, very slow and long, excellentcene when he, as a Nazi official, is interrogating a farmer: tops!). There are things which, under satire, pull the spectator or the reader into the slime by turning them into the very tyrants and "human beasts," the story originally intends to denounce. This is what happened in Tarantino's movie. It hasn't taken place in BS due to VN's insistence in maintaining the role as an omnipotent author and by his emphasis on the fictionality of events. Nevertheless, there is not one occurrence, as absurd as it seems to be, that hasn't happened in human history: the resource having the staged events dissolve to demonstrate their fictional nature is an unsuccesful maneuver on the author's part. V.N's tactics rob the reader from a confrontation with the senseless destruction he may daily witness, and which results from the alliance of mediocrity, intent on the destruction of those who differ from the standard unthinking automatic pattern ... and a lot more. Injustice and tragedy are real - and Wilson's compliance with a project of making them appear as purely "subjective, or something of the sort," on N's part, is yet another puzzling observation of Wilson, but here again it might have been prompted by his particular frustration with something he'd expected from Bend Sinister ( and which VN didn't have to provide for him...). A funny satire on modern tyrannies (economical and global) and "mindlessness," which has been very successful is Jason Reitman's movie "Up in the Air." ( I haven't yet read Walter Kim's novel) since its "message" doesn't feel like a message but it leaves its imprint while, simultaneously, it lets the spectator free to deal with it using his resources to work it out for himself in his dealings with the outside world. Nabokov's reader, in BS, doesn't get this chance. He is seduced, he may be carried away by the plot but, at long last, he is left in the lurch, to suffer the paralyzing horror of a "denial."

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

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