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Re: Nabokov and Carlyle
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Frances,
Thanks for your correction. You ask whether VN really thought The Invisible Man to be one of the greatest novels in English literature. I think he did. He was a great admirer of Wells' novels and listed as many as five of them among his favorite books: The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Country of the Blind, The War of the Worlds and The First Men on the Moon (Strong Opinions, p. 175). In LATH there are allusions to Passionate Friends and The Island of Dr Moreau. What VN thought of Wells' Russia in The Shadows* (in which the author famously calls Lenin "The Dreamer in the Kremlin"), written after HGW's visit to Petrograd and Moscow of the War Communism years, is a different question. Btw., here you can read an article by Martin Gardner on Wells' book: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/h-g-wells-in-russia/.
*Do the Shadows in Pale Fire have anything to do with the title of Wells' book, I wonder?
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Thanks for your correction. You ask whether VN really thought The Invisible Man to be one of the greatest novels in English literature. I think he did. He was a great admirer of Wells' novels and listed as many as five of them among his favorite books: The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Country of the Blind, The War of the Worlds and The First Men on the Moon (Strong Opinions, p. 175). In LATH there are allusions to Passionate Friends and The Island of Dr Moreau. What VN thought of Wells' Russia in The Shadows* (in which the author famously calls Lenin "The Dreamer in the Kremlin"), written after HGW's visit to Petrograd and Moscow of the War Communism years, is a different question. Btw., here you can read an article by Martin Gardner on Wells' book: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/h-g-wells-in-russia/.
*Do the Shadows in Pale Fire have anything to do with the title of Wells' book, I wonder?
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/