J.Aisenberg: "Speaking of
Lolita and Allen..., in his film Manhattan, a scene where he and his girl
...walk down a street talking, Keaton's character declares thinks Allen's going
out with a teen is Nabokovian; her boyfriend declares him a candidate for
most over rated artists of all time. I guess that's a sighting. Watch it
here at youtube."
JM: Unfortunately the
youtube instructions came out muddled for me.
I was curious to confirm if the "over rated
artist" in the transcribed dialogue refers to a Woody Allen's
momentary self-mockery, or to Nabokov himself.
Allen might have read
E.Wilson's angry criticism of Nabokov's
"Eugene Onegin" translation ( NYBR 1965). In this case, the choice for "over
rated" might enter as a kind of highbrow "quote"...*
* Wilson noted, about VN, that "his
speaking of the eclogues of 'the overrated Virgil' as 'stale
imitations of the idyls of Theocritus'..." would be "the result of his instinct
to take digs at great reputations... Balzac's "La Femme de Trente ans" is
a "much overrated vulgar novelette." Dostoevsky is identified as "a
much overrated, sentimental, and Gothic novelist of the time"..." Le
Rouge et le Noir, also, is "much overrated" ...