Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0002351, Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:10:06 -0700

Subject
Lolita. A Question.
Date
Body
I would like to thank Charles Nicol and Michael Juliar for answering my
question about the poll. While looking for the answer myself, the closest
I had come was a list of the "Outstanding Novels in American
Literature" for the 1950s which was published in 1960 in the
series "Reader's Bookshelf of American Literature." _Lolita_ is the last
and the latest (in terms of its American publication date) novel mentioned
there. In addition to the already discussed _The Catcher in the
Rye_ (1951) and _The Invisible Man_ (1952), the list also had Budd
Schulberg's _The Disenchanted_ (1950); John Hersey's _The Wall_
(1950); James Jones' _From Here to Eternity_ (1951), William Styron's _Lie
Down in Darkness_ (1951); Saul Bellow's _The Adventures of Augie March_
(1953); Eudora Welty's _The Ponder Heart_ (1954); William March's _The Bad
Seed_ (1954); MacKinlay Kantor's _Andersonville_ (1955); James Agee's
_Death in the Family_ (1957), and Jack Kerouac's _On the Road_ (1957). It
is interesting to contemplate how well several of these novels (including,
obviously, _Lolita_) have aged through the years -- and how many more have
not.

Galya Diment