Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov (55 page)

In terms of the work of other authors, I am deeply indebted to Stacy Schiff, Brian Boyd, and Andrew Field, the biographers of Véra and Vladimir Nabokov; Maxim Shrayer, who has been investigating the importance of Jewish themes in Nabokov’s work for many years; and, again, Michael Scammell, who was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s biographer and the translator of two of Nabokov’s Russian-language novels. I would also like to acknowledge Dieter Zimmer’s online list of residences and genealogical tables for Nabokov and his family, which saved me a good deal of time when I sat down to create my own chronology of Nabokov’s life in the context of world events.

My gratitude for being alive in an era of electronic research is immeasurable. The digital collections of the Russian history and human rights organization Memorial, the central Yad Vashem database of Shoah victims, and
The New York Times
searchable archives provided invaluable information. I accessed electronic databases thousands of times to useful ends. Without digital resources, this book would have taken decades to write.

Research that Mike Adler shared, particularly a series of concentration camp maps, was also very helpful, as were various forms of encouragement, feedback, or assistance from Peter Davis, Justin Kaplan, Anne Bernays, Rose Moss, Thorne Anderson, Marcela Valdes, Alicia Anstead, and Vasil Derd’uk.

This book would be a lesser thing without frank and generous manuscript readers. In addition those already noted above, I would like to thank Brian Snyder, Paul Lombardo, Mark Johnson, Christopher Goffard, Mary Newsom, John Ptak, and Beth Filiano.

I am tremendously grateful to the current and former staff of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, which made it possible for me to take the class that launched this project in 2008. Bob Giles, the curator of the Foundation through 2011, has been a supporter from the beginning.

Adrienne Mayor, who blazed a trail ahead of me as an independent researcher, helped make sure this book would see the light of day by introducing me to my agent, Katherine Boyle of Veritas Literary Agency. Katie has been a tireless champion of this project, a navigator in rough waters, and a source of boundless support.

I am grateful to Claiborne Hancock, Jessica Case, and Maia Larson at Pegasus Books, who have humbled me with their faith in this effort. Jessica, my editor, made many astute suggestions that shaped and refined this book. Maria Fernandez worked her design magic, while Phil Gaskill copy-edited the manuscript into shape.

On a personal level, this project has left a big footprint in my life. Without the support of friends and family, it could not have been written. For various late-night conversations, temporary takeovers of guest rooms, provision of meals, watching of children, and cheerleading, I would like to express my gratitude to Peter and Kathy Vergano, Bob and Patricia Pitzer, Sharon and Frank Mauzey, Rob Pitzer, Cecile Pratt, Gwynn Dujardin, Tom Schumacher, Karen Aldana, Matt Olson, Danielle Tezcan, Gaiutra Bahadur, Lisa Noone, Beth Macy, Kelly King, Kristina Cartwright, and Patricia Ricapa.

And finally, thanks are due to those who have contributed more than anyone else to this effort: my children, David and Kate, and my husband, Dan, who gave up many things, tangible and intangible, so that I could travel the world, research, and write. Across the last five years, Dan in particular has given me a tremendous gift, never wavering in his belief that this story had to be told.

While many institutions and individuals around the world are doing wonderful work, much more needs to be done to preserve the details of the past and consider its role in the present. Twenty percent of the author’s proceeds of this book will be donated to relevant charities, split evenly between Nabokov-related organizations and memorial groups focusing on the Holocaust and the Gulag. For more details, or to find out how to donate, please visit
3
www.nabokovsecrethistory.com
.

A
BBREVIATIONS

The Works of Vladimir Nabokov

Abbreviations for Other Works and Sources

N
OTES

I
NTRODUCTION

1
Chesme Palace’s House of Invalids sits next to Chesme Church in the southern part of St. Petersburg.

2
See “A Visit to the Museum” for a story in which a trip to a museum in France transports its narrator to a Russian police state.

C
HAPTER
O
NE
: W
AITING FOR
S
OLZHENITSYN

1
Assessments of
Lolita
: “funny,” William Styron; “the only convincing love story of our century,”
Vanity Fair;
and “the filthiest book I have ever read” by John Gordon, editor of the
Sunday Express
.

2
John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe
: BBAY, 407–8.

3
a stable of stories
: See the Lolita-related dissection of period films in Graham Vickers’
Chasing Lolita: How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov’s Little Girl All Over Again
(2008), 76–83.

4
cried herself to sleep each night
: Humbert himself notes Lolita’s nightly tears (176).

5
Oates, Joyce Carol, “A Personal View of Nabokov,”
Saturday Review
, January 6, 1973, 36–7. See Phyllis Roth’s
Critical Essays on Vladimir Nabokov
(1984) for the original, as well as a postscript Oates later added to her essay.

6
The Updike quote is from “Van Loves Ada; Ada Loves Van,”
The New Yorker
, August 2, 1969, 70; Amis’s description comes from “Martin Amis on
Lolita
,” an essay published by Random House for the 100th anniversary of Nabo kov’s birth;
for forty years
: From Karlinsky’s “Nabokov and Chekhov: the lesser Russian tradition,”
Triquarterly
, Winter 1970, 7–16. This history is also discussed by Leland de la Durantaye in “The Pattern of Cruelty and the
Cruelty of Pattern in Vladimir Nabokov,”
The Cambridge Quarterly
(October 2006), 301–326.

7
Eliot
: NWL, 263;
Dostoyevsky
: LRL, 104;
Faulkner
: NWL, 239;
Pasternak
: SO, 57. The Pasternak reference is to
Doctor Zhivago
, a novel Nabokov abhorred, though he found Pasternak’s early poetry remarkable. When it came to women novelists, Nabokov would make an exception for Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park
, and occasionally offered kind words privately about books written by women, such as his praise of some of Mary McCarthy’s fiction. In SM (177), Nabokov mentions his dislike of Stendhal, Balzac, and Zola. Malraux and James are dismissed on NWL (19).