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A lengthy essay on Nabokov has just been published on
the Boston Review site. The author is the novelist and
critic Roger Boylan. Below are the title, first
paragraph, and link.
Jim Twiggs
BOSTON REVIEW
Nabokov's Gift
A writer's legacy
Roger Boylan
When I was a boy in Geneva, sometime in the 1960s, a
schoolmate of mine belonged to a society of junior
lepidopterists. A couple of times a year, under the
guidance of mature butterfly experts, he and his
fellow enthusiasts went off to capture papillons in
the alpine meadows above Montreux, at the opposite end
of Lake Geneva. On one such expedition the guide was a
stout, bald Russian gentleman in shorts and a parka
who, despite being in his mid-60s, bounded ahead of
the pack, brandishing his net and firing off
exhortations and butterfly lore in accented but fluent
English and French. When the hunt was over, he
abruptly took his leave with a cheery “Au revoir, tout
le monde.” His name I heard for the first time as,
approximately, Monsieur Nabucco. He was, said my
friend, one of the world’s leading experts on
butterflies. He was also, he added in awe, the author
of a really dirty book.
[CLICK TO READ THE ENTIRE ESSAY:]
http://bostonreview.net/BR32.4/article_boylan.php