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Subject:
Re: [NABOKV-L] Was Nabokov a Hebephile\Ephebophile?
From:
Stadlen <stadlen@aol.com>
Date:
9/8/2015 6:38 AM
To:
Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>

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


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