[EDNote-resending this due to multiple rejections of aol.com email
domain]:
Addendum on Nabokov as liar.
For years I kept a ragged newspaper cutting, I think from The
Observer (London). It was by Stephen Vizinczey and had the title
"Nabokov's Big Lie". I kept it because I wanted to hang on to my
perception that Nabokov, whom, in many ways, I admired, was,
nevertheless, lying. I had felt this with some conviction since
Pale Fire appeared: Nabokov so obviously did not identify with
Kinbote's homosexual pederasty in the way he did with Humbert's
heterosexual child abuse. Vizinczey was the only support I had for
my uneasy observation (I am excluding, of course, the scribbling
of those who needed no evidence). I have mislaid his piece, but I
see that he published it, presumably the same year, in Truth and
Lies in Literature (1986). It must have been a review of The
Enchanter, also published that year. I do not recall any other
reference in this list to Vizinczey's review, or thesis. Are not
other readers of Nabokov troubled by what seems me his lack of
integrity in this respect? Perhaps I should clarify, on
reflection, that Vizinczey was criticising, and I agree, not just
Nabokov's apparent dishonesty in interviews but, more
fundamentally, dishonesty in his actual work. Goodness knows,
Brian Boyd and (if I may mention my minuscule effort) I have tried
to demonstrate the moral nature of Nabokov's novels, his inviting
the reader to see through the seductions of the narrators. But,
with regret, I find myself forced to ask, with Vizinczey, whether
behind the seductions of the narrators there is an attempt at
seduction of the reader by the author himself, in a way
incompatible with the highest standards of literature.
Anthony Stadlen