The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the End of a Beautiful Friendship
- ISBN-10
- 1101870230
- ISBN-13
- 9781101870235
- Series
- The Feud
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 256
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2016-12-06
- Publisher
- Pantheon
- Author
- Alex Beam
Description
The Feud is the deliciously ironic (and sad) tale of how two literary giants destroyed their friendship in a fit of mutual pique and egomania. In 1940, Edmund Wilson was the undisputed big dog of American letters. Vladimir Nabokov was a near-penniless Russian exile seeking asylum in the States. Wilson became a mentor to Nabokov, introducing him to every editor of note, assigning him book reviews for The New Republic, engineering a Guggenheim Fellowship. Their intimate friendship blossomed over a shared interest in all things Russian, ruffled a bit by political disagreements. But then came the worldwide best-selling novel Lolita, and the tables were turned. Suddenly Nabokov was the big (and very rich) dog. The feud finally erupted in full when Nabokov published his hugely footnoted and virtually unreadable literal translation of Pushkin’s famously untranslatable verse novel, Eugene Onegin. Wilson attacked his friend’s translation with hammer and tongs in The New York Review of Books. Nabokov counterattacked. Back and forth the increasingly aggressive letters flew, until the narcissism of small differences reduced their friendship to ashes. Alex Beam has fashioned this clash of literary titans into a delightful and irresistible book—a comic contretemps of a very high order and a poignant demonstration of the fragility of even the deepest of friendships. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout)
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
The Witches: The feud
By James DarkeThe Witches: The feud
-
The Feud That Sparked the Renaissance: The Feud That Sparked The Renaissance
By Paul Robert WalkerHe was forced to share the commission with his arch-rival, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, whose ′Paradise Doors′ are also masterworks. This is the story of these two men - a tale of artistic genius and individual triumph.
-
The Sparks: Book I of the Feud Trilogy
By Kyle PrueThe Sparks has won numerous national and international awards for Best Young Adult Fiction and Fantasy. Kyle also won an International Moonbeam Award and a prestigious Indie Fab award for Best Young Author.
-
Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade
By Jeff ShesolA Des Moines Register reporter calculated that LBJ thereafter rejected at least a dozen successive staff appeals for food aid reform . 331 “ The two bills were incredibly intricate ” : Newfield , 104–5 ; Levinson interview .
-
Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud
By Shaun ConsidineIn real life they fought over as many man as they did film roles. The story of these two dueling divas is hilarious, monstrous, and tragic, and Shaun Considine’s account of it is exhaustive, explosive, and unsparing. “Rip-roaring.
-
The Feud in Early Modern Germany
By Hillay ZmoraGoethe, a lawyer by training, did not look down on the feuds of his hero as an expression of a barbarous age before the advance of the modern state guaranteed the civilising benefits of domestic peace and justice. For him the feud was ...
-
The Feud Buster
By Robert E. Howard“Lissen here, young man, don't start tellin' me how to conduck a feud. I growed up in this here'n. It war in full swing when I was born, and I done spent my whole life carryin' it on.” “That's just it,” I snorted.
-
The Feud That Wasn’t: The Taylor Ring, Bill Sutton, John Wesley Hardin, and Violence in Texas
By James M. SmallwoodDelony's article is a reprint of a short book he privately published in 1937. ... History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); James McPherson, "Southern Comfort," New York Times Review of Books 48 (April 12, 2001): 28, 30-31.
-
Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900
By Altina L. WallerIn this study, Altina Waller tells the real story of the Hatfields and McCoys and the Tug Valley of West Virginia and Kentucky, placing the feud in the context of community and regional change in the era of industrialization.
-
The Mccoys: The Mccoys Before the Feud Series Vol. 1: Before the Feud
By Thomas McCoyWith time running out before the general's reinforcements arrive, Tommy risks a deadly confrontation in a series of secret raids. Can he secure the rightful Confederate property before the North deals the McCoys a final crushing blow?