I was near to asking the (London) Times why they had covered so many trivial deaths post-dating Dmitri’s Feb 22 departure ... Then today, March 9, his obituary has at last appeared. The headings read
Dmitri Nabokov
Translator, opera singer, racing driver and keeper of his novelist father’s flame who translated much of his writings into English.
The photo shows a rather distressed DN posed in front of a stern portrait of VN. I’m not totally pleased. Dmitri gets a quarter of the print-area devoted to an obscure member of an obscure pop-group (the Monkees; who they?!). On the TOoL affair, they write “Many felt that it was a rare misstep and did not add to Nabokov’s reputation.” Surely, that loaded, misleading “many” should more fairly be a “some?”
The Times do run supplementary Lives Remembered columns submitted by readers. I hope some such appear from VN-listers who knew Dmitri well.
Stan Kelly-Bootle