Nabokov quite liked Cheever's story "The Country Husband," and twice paid homage to it: in an essay on inspiration and in "Ada." I don't see a Cheever-Shade connection, however. Cheever wrote rich, vigorous and beautifully-crafted prose, but so did a number of writers in the last half of the 20th Century, and they don't sound any more like Shade than he did.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Johns Cheever and Shade
Date:	Sun, 8 Mar 2009 11:18:00 -0700
From:	Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
To:	Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>

-
Just a little observation touching on John Shade and suppressed
homosexuality. I opened the paper this morning to find an article on
John Cheever and it made me think how very similar Cheever and Shade
are as writers. I don't know enough about Cheever's homosexuality
myself to comment on that side, and I'm pretty sure Nabokov could not
have known about it, but there is a very strong similarity of tone
between Cheever's stories (at least as I remember them) and Shade's
poem.

Any comments?

Carolyn

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