In the U.S. he finally made the transition from writing in Russian as a Russian to writing in English as an American. It began almost exactly a century ago when Nabokov left his homeland, splitting the work of a great writer in half. He acknowledged that “I am an American writer, born in Russia,” but he resented giving up his first language. As the enraptured Humbert trails Lolita — he calls her “my Lo” — across the American landscape, Nabokov follows the example of James Joyce in Ulysses. When he taught in university — Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell — he shocked students by mentioning he loathed the works of Thomas Mann and William Faulkner.

Source: National Post April 12, 2019 15:11 UTC