The Feud, Alex Beam
The Feud, Alex Beam
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The Feud
Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the End of a Beautiful Friendship

Author: Alex Beam

Narrator: Douglas Pullar

Unabridged: 5 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/06/2016


Synopsis

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 to him book reviews for the New Republic, engineering a Guggenheim. Their intimate friendship blossomed over a shared interest in all things Russian, ruffled a bit by political disagreements. But then came Lolita, and suddenly Nabokov was the big (and very rich) dog. Finally the feud 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 tong in the New York Review of Books. Nabokov counterattacked in the same publication. Back and forth the increasingly aggressive letters volleyed until their friendship was reduced to ashes by the narcissism of small differences.

About Alex Beam

Alex Beam is a columnist for the Boston Globe and a former Moscow correspondent. He is the author of two novels about Russia, Fellow Travelers and The Americans are Coming!, as well as three works of nonfiction: American Crucifixion; Gracefully Insane; and A Great Idea at the Time, the latter two both New York Times Notable Books. He has also written for the International Herald Tribune, the Atlantic, Slate, and Forbes/FYI. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife and three sons.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ronald

To be Published by Pantheon on 6 December 20016 (Just in time for Holiday giving for all of the aesthetes on your list) The will be the hardest review I've ever written. For about 25 years Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson were the best of friends, sharing a love of literature (classic and dirty), s......more

The somewhat sad, mostly ridiculous tale of how two great authors formed a friendship based on the sheer love of erudition, and then fell into epistolary sniping over Nabokov's sprawling translation of, and commentary on, Pushkin's verse novel Eugene Onegin. Beam shows how Nabokov, upon coming to Am......more