Diment, Galya. Nabokov and Cornell: A View of the Outsider. Fall 1999

It was Morris Bishop who started the tradition of the "Nabokov at Cornell" presentations at Nabokov celebratory and tributary events. The year was 1969, Nabokov's seventieth birthday, and Alfred Appel conceived of a volume of appraisals, reminiscences, and tributes. Nabokov had been out of Cornell for ten years by then, and far away from Bishop at the time was not only Nabokov, residing in Switzerland, but also worries about Lolita and the damage the book could possibly do to the reputation of Bishop's beloved Cornell. Cornell was doing well, Nabokov was doing equally well, if not better, and Bishop could now safely revisit the past and speak lightly of his worries occasioned by his friend's publication of Lolita.