To the List,
In my pursuit of the Nabokovian soul, which began rather unsuccessfully with my birthday challenge to the list, I have decided to take a deeper look at VN's pet peeves. So far acquaintance with those loathed ones has brought me nothing but pleasure and intellectual stimulation.
Dr Freud of course is the big bugaboo, and as my interest in Judaism has been rekindled in recent years, I have read his take on Moses and have found it very interesting and stimulating of further thought and reading. I intend to read some of his other writings, especially related to general questions of culture and human nature.
Dr Schweitzer too is on the list. Haven't a clue as to what could have caused the rift between VN and this kind and brilliant person, but reading his biography by James Brabazon is an unmitigated pleasure. Interesting to learn, for example, that Schweitzer and Jean-Paul Sartre were second cousins, and that J-P S also took a highly jaundiced view toward the whole Schweitzer family. Odd to find VN on Sartre's side in this family dispute?
Then there's jazz - - how can anyone (except for obvious reasons, the Soviets) loathe jazz?? Maybe if he had heard Brubeck? Was there any music he could tolerate, by the way?
I am also finding reading Dr Zhivago, despite our former editor's remark, stimulating. And if VN, as I read somewhere in the archives, was really such a mandarine as to find Brodsky and Mandelshtam (Mandelshtam!!) unworthy, then I throw up my hands in despair.
Still hoping to hear how terribly wrong I am yet again,
Carolyn Kunin