Nabokov in America by Robert Roper

Author:Robert Roper [Roper, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781632860866
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

Corral Log Motel (interior)

He had sent White something else instead, a story about Pnin, a Russian-born professor, which was suitable. Writing that and writing the installments of Speak, Memory had been “brief sunny escapes” from the other book, the one that had tortured him. Nabokov both wanted and did not want to show White Lolita. He was obliged to, under their contract, and he hoped that she would declare it a work of genius despite its treatment of depravity, of such incomparable merit that all worries about public revulsion or possible prosecution could be forgotten. White was not charmed, however, by the unsigned manuscript that Véra hand-carried27 to New York a few months later, at the end of ’53. The New Yorker’s head editor, William Shawn, was not to be shown it by any means, Véra insisted to White—Shawn was more shockable28 than she was.

The writing of a classic novel thus passed, was accomplished, marked by a few comments to an editor (“heartbreaking,” “enormous”) and by a hint or two to friend Wilson29 (“quite soon I may show you a monster”). White had no doubt heard this sort of thing before: writers often think their latest work their greatest. He continued dictating that fall, recording only on the sixth30 of December that he was truly finished. “The theme and situation are decidedly sensuous,” he told Wilson, but “its art is pure and its fun riotous.” It was his “best thing in English.” One of the first editors to see the manuscript warned him, however, that “we would all go to jail if the thing were published. I feel rather depressed about this fiasco31.”

The publication of Lolita, like its composition, was long and tormenting32. At times it seemed unlikely to be accomplished. Nabokov acted as his own agent33, as Wilson had taught him to. Viking rejected it first, an editor warning that publication under a pseudonym, Nabokov’s initial plan for the book, would invite prosecution, reluctance to affix an author’s real name suggesting awareness of pornographic content. Simon & Schuster rejected it next, editor Wallace Brockway blaming the decision on prudish colleagues. In October ’54, J. (James) Laughlin, bold avant-gardist not afraid to challenge obscenity statutes, said no for New Directions. Farrar, Straus & Young declined out of fear of a court battle they could not win. Jason Epstein, of Doubleday, had been tipped to the book by Wilson, who was given a manuscript in late ’54; like Pascal Covici, the Viking editor, and like Brockway, and like Roger Straus of Farrar, Straus, Epstein esteemed34 Nabokov’s writing but was unable to persuade his colleagues to publish the new book, and in a memo he expressed some literary reservations but also a feeling that Lolita was somehow and not in a trivial way, brilliant.

Laughlin and Covici thought it might have a better chance35 overseas. Nabokov therefore sent it to Doussia Ergaz, his agent in Paris, and started looking around for an American agent to do what he had been unable to—he was willing to part36 with 25 percent of earnings, he told Brockway.

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