Beam’s carelessness reaches an apogee in the Boston Globe article Nabokov was such a Jerk.
It’s not worth dwelling on much of the content: there’s little there of substance. But I shall take a look at the claim that Beam makes regarding Doctor Zhivago. Zhivago is important to this story, as while Nabokov hated the book for artistic and political reasons, Wilson latched onto it. “A black cat came between us … Doctor Zhivago” as Nabokov explained.
This follows up in detail on the review of Alex Beam’s The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson and the end of a beautiful friendship. You can read my (not entirely positive) review here.
The dust-up of the feud, and the spectrum of reviews, seems unsatisyingly damning for Beam. So, as a final word on the exchange, he brings in a deus ex machina in the form of Alexander Gerschenkron. We are told that Gerschenkron – the “known as ‘The Great Gerschenkron’ … a mythic figure … feared no-one, not the Bolsheviks, not the Nazis … certainly not Vladimir Nabokov”. In Beam’s account, Gerschenkron attacks every aspect of Onegin – the translation, the commentary, and the scholarship in a “merciless takedown” – Nabokov never replied, and quietly incorporated his changes into the revision.
This account should trouble us, as it brings convenient closure for Beam and allows him to avoid having to examine the scholarship in detail. How accurate is it?
Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson and the end of a beautiful friendship by Alex Beam
An amusing, light-footed but increasingly partial and even sloppy account of the infamous disintegration of a long-standing literary friendship.
What’s important in a friendship? Does loyalty and tolerance in disagreement come first – or does principal, character and rapport count for more? For a quarter of a century, Vladimir Nabokov – already a well-respected Russian author in the European emigration, but virtually unknown in his adopted American home; and Edmund Wilson, the pre-eminent critic of his day, were vital friends.