The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the End of a Beautiful Friendship Hardcover – December 6, 2016

Alex Beam reports that when he first heard of the feud between Vladmir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson, he laughed out loud I did the same reading this book. I was a grad student in English at a time when Edmund Wilson was very much a personage. I read The Wound and the Bow, The Shores of Light and his diaries from the 1960s. Those later diaries did put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm for Wilson because I learned more than I wanted to know about the sexual problems of elderly men.And I also enjoyed Nabokov. My college mentor was a huge fan of Pale Fire and I learned to love it as well. Wilson provided Nabokov an entree to many opportunities to review and helped more than one member of the Nabokov family.The two were reported to be the best of friends. Then Nabokov did a translation of Eugene Onegin It came out in 4 volumes and totalled 1,895 pages most of which was commentary on the poem. It also includes such interesting English words as "mollitude" and "shandrydans." The most amusing conflict is when Nabokov's colleagues on this translation project suggest he use the word friend while he stubbornly refuses to consider any other word than "pal." When the Onegin translation was published, Wilson reviewed it for the The New York Review of Books. Says Beam: " It remains a classic of its genre, the genre being an overlong, spiteful, stochastically accurate, generally useless but unfailingly amusing hatchet job, the yawning massive load of boiling pitch that inevitably ends up scalding the grinning fiend pouring hot oil over the battlement as much as it harms the intended victim." While this caused hard feelings and sparked debate, I'm not sure it changed much for Wilson or Nabokov. Nabokov's career continued to soar and Wilson's reputation continued to fade. When Wilson was given a literary award late in life, the wife of one of the plutocrats attending the reception asked Wilson if he had written Finlandia.. (He wrote a book called To The Finland Station) Nowadays people confuse him with Edward O. Wilson. As person says to Beam when asked if he knows who Edmund Wilson is, "It's weird how he makes everything about ants." There are other reasons the friendship may have come to grief. The literary superstar Nabokov may have not have liked remembering how much he relied on Wilson when he first came to America. Wilson who published erotic fiction, Memoirs of Hecate County, may have resented the greater success of Lolita. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the foot fetishes Gore Vidal reviewing The Thirties for The New York Review of Books, counted 24 references to women's feet. Vidal cited Wilson's 'podophilia,' and observes, 'He could have made a fortune in women's footwear.' Onegin is known for its 'pedal digression.' Mostly this is a lot of fun if you enjoy literary eminences behaving badly. It's a hoot.

I was a great fan of the books of both Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson before I discovered their feud , and then later learned that they had previously been great friends. This book tells the entire story wonderfully , and bring both Nabokov and Wilson to life . It also reminds us of a time when literature played a greater role in American life than it does today . Wilson was the arbiter of traditional literary values , while Nabokov was the fearless (at times reckless) innovator and iconoclast. It is fascinating to watch the reputation of one rise from obscurity to global fame, while the other moves in the other direction.If you have any interest in either of these authors, you will love this book as I did.

What could have easily been an essay has been expanded to a short volume about two men who were stars in their time, but only one of whom has remained in the firmament. Most of the expansion reads like filler, with extensive quotes by all the people who participated in or observed the falling out of two massive egos. The precipitating event was the harsh review Wilson published on Nabokov's eccentric translation of Pushkin's masterpiece Eugene Onegin. The subsequent to-and-fro is reported in exhaustive detail and by the end one may not care much about ancient oneupmanship. While written for the general reader, I am uncertain how many general readers will care to read a whole volume about two prima donnas (for that's how both come across) trying to top the other. Beam is slightly more in the Wilson camp, as Nabokov's eccentricities appear to get the greater pummeling. And his writing style, full of alliterations and groan-worthy puns, wears out its welcome very fast. But most of the book speeds by painlessly and it has some value as an insight into mid-Twentieth Century literary life.

Disagreeing on the quality of English translations of Pushkin’s “Eugenie Onegin,” Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov, close friends for a quarter of a century, lost the peace of their mind and broke their friendship. Their passion for Pushkin and rivalry fueled their literary battle till their death, attracting both masters of pen and simple readers. Nabokov was so disappointed in the existing translations that he eventually embarked on his own in hope to create a masterpiece worthy of the original novel in verses. Instead, he ended up with a “wildly queer miscarriage,” as R. Lowell called it, which, however, was adored by some others. A good decade spent by Nabokov on his translation resulted in the gargantuan product of 1,850 pages (mostly footnotes) versus 200 of the original edition in Russian. Most importantly, his great accomplishment didn’t stop others from their humble attempts stimulated by their desire to bring the best of Pushkin’s style to English-speaking readers.Unearthing the circumstances of this literary battle between the rivals, native Russian and English speakers, also celebrated writers, the author Alex Beam shed light on their personalities and literary works, often expressing his own opinion, especially about Nabokov’s art and narcissism. I tend to agree with him. We learn that Beam’s heroes had nothing in common from the very beginning. It was the neediness of Nabokov as an immigrant and helpfulness of Wilson held them together.In whole, this book is an entertaining and educational read that also shows how easily we can be exited and deceived taking demons for angels, as it was the case with Wilson who adored Lenin, the Bolshevik revolution, and the entire communistic enterprise. Clearly, Nabokov’s attitude to these events and his views of the leaders was much more realistic. He personally experienced the hell of the 1917 coup and the following terror on his own skin.Another Wilson’s fantasy: “There were three great Russian writers during the period of revolution in Russia—Lenin, Trotsky, and Alexander Blok,” sounds as a joke to me, especially because the master of practical jokes was Nabokov, as we learn from the book, not Wilson.As far as A. Beam’s writing is concerned, it seems he accomplished his mission, “tap-dancing on the graves” of the rivals. Occasionally, however, his book is chaotic possibly because of his own excitement by the topic. For example, the case with Arndt. It was hard to figure out the dates of Nabokov’s and Arndt’s translation of “Eugenie Onegin” and when exactly Bollinger’s Prize was awarded to Arndt for his translation (before Nabokov finished his own or after?) Also, the author could mention those earlier translations, which angered so much Nabokov’s genius.

Wer wissen will, wie und warum die Freunde Nabokov und Wilson sich entzweiten, kann es hier erfahren. Und sich die Lektüre des Briefwechsels der beiden ersparen.

Excellent condition, good price. Quick service. All as hoped for.