"To the Editors"

1967

Mr. Enright whose review (Nov. 3) of Nabokov and Stegner’s appreciation of him resembled hauntingly the sermons in the church I attended as a child seems bent on disparaging the author of Lolita and Pale Fire. Why? And is it really necessary for the accomplishment of his dubious purpose to use such expressions as “sexual maniac,” “nauseous language,” “murderer,” “rapist,” “not always clean fun,” “squalid” and I pass….

I personally prefer “the far-fetched language” of Nabokov. And as for the very last unquotable quote from a horse which Mr. Enright has chosen as the tag line to his article there is nothing in all of Nabokov that betrays so small a viewpoint.

Dorothea Tanning
Paris

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