Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0000310, Sat, 30 Jul 1994 19:45:33 -0700

Subject
VN, FSF, Meyers, etc (fwd)
Date
Body

There is a long review of Meyers' biography of Fitzgerald in the New York
Review of Books, August 11, 1994, pp. 14-16, where Brad Leithauser, who
wrote the review, actually compares Nabokov and Fitzgerald in terms of
their "potential."(Nabokov "wins): while the reviewer finds it difficult
to imagine F. ever writing a better novel than Gatsby, "Nabokov (born
three years after Fitzgerald) ... was so erudite and varied and
inventive" that "as magnificent as [his] oeuvre is... one can envision
his having created masterworks far different from The Defense and Lolita
and Pale Fire and the rest. Indeed, the shelf of great books that Nabokov
never wrote looks as dizzying as that which he did" (p. 16).

He doesn't like the biography, though.