The Feud

Starred review from June 13, 2016
In this intriguing and melancholy chronicle, Boston Globe columnist Beam (Gracefully Insane) traces the rise and fall of the friendship between Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov. The two men met in 1940, when Nabokov’s cousin pleaded with Wilson, an eminent critic and writer, to help Nabokov, a recent émigré from Russia to the U.S. Among other things, Wilson commissioned reviews from Nabokov, helped him secure a Guggenheim Fellowship, and introduced him to prominent editors. Over the years, the two spent holidays together with their families, exchanged affectionate correspondence, and even collaborated on a translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri. By the time Wilson died in 1972, it had all fallen apart. The main cause was Wilson’s scathing review of Nabokov’s 1,895-page, hyperquirky translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (one of his many criticisms was Nabokov’s choosing the obscure term “sapajous” over the logical translation choice, “monkeys”), which began a protracted war of words between the two. Beam’s book evokes the strangely satisfying sensation of witnessing smart people bickering over seemingly small matters. It also provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse, full of anecdotal ephemera, of how Wilson and Nabokov interacted and why. But the more lasting sensation is the bittersweetness of this portrait of a fallen friendship—at its height, Nabokov wrote to Wilson, “You are one of the few people in the world whom I keenly miss when I do not see them.”

A former Moscow correspondent chronicles one of the most famous literary spats of the 20th century.In 1939, the composer Nicolas Nabokov rented a house on Cape Cod across the street from Edmund Wilson, the Russophile editor of the New Republic, and asked for a favor: could he help his cousin, Vladimir, recently arrived from St. Petersburg, secure some reviewing gigs? Wilson obliged. He and Vladimir became friends, even though Wilson failed to convince the younger man--whom Boston Globe columnist Beam (American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church, 2014, etc.) calls "the twentieth century's Trickster King"--to abandon his love of puns and anagrams. After two decades of friendship, however, Wilson wrote a "generally useless but unfailingly amusing hatchet job" about Nabokov's massive four-volume translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Years of public bickering followed. Beam does an excellent job of depicting the growing strain between the two men, brought on in part by the huge success of Lolita compared to Wilson's own attempt at a salacious novel, Memoirs of Hecate County. The pages devoted to the back and forth among Nabokov, Wilson, and other luminaries who weighed in on the Onegin contretemps are great fun. But the flippant tone of Beam's writing--note the book's subtitle--may rankle some readers. Nabokov was "a quick-on-the-uptake student at the Edmund Wilson Academy of Not Taking Sh*t from Publishers." Spendthrift Wilson and money "were never destined to share a taxicab." Nabokov fans are "deep-dish Nabokovians." When Wilson argued about Russian prosody, he "revisited Gerundistan." After he quotes Nabokov's dismissal of lesser Onegin translations, Beam reprimands him with, "But really, Vladimir." Prose that calls attention to itself didn't always serve Nabokov well, and it doesn't work here, either. A well-researched account of a literary dust-up marred by superficial writing. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2016

In 1940, leading man of American letters Edmund Wilson helped asylum-seeker Vladimir Nabokov, introducing him to editors and assigning him book reviews for the New Republic. They became close friends despite political differences. But petty jealousies flourished when Nabokov became rich, famous, and celebrated in his own right, and a full-fledged feud burst forth when Wilson slammed in the New York Review of Books Nabokov's tricky translation of Pushkin's verse novel Eugene Onegin. A former Moscow bureau chief for BusinessWeek, Boston Globe columnist Beam most recently wrote 2014's American Crucifixion.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 1, 2016

The almost legendary tale of Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson's very public literary debate is told with great sympathy and skill by Beam (columnist, The Boston Globe; American Crucifixion). From this feud, ostensibly begun over Nabokov's translation of Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, he has fashioned a kind of Euripidean tragedy on the self-destructive power of the ego. On one level it is a story of two titans of modern American literature coming to verbal blows over vocabulary and syntax, but more importantly, and more universally, it is the story of a generous friendship collapsing under the weight of reputation and the desperate need to have the final say. Beam is a natural storyteller and lucid scholar. The intellectual back-and-forth (mostly glimpsed through letters and diary entries) is fascinating--who would ever imagine that the incorrect use of the past participle could evoke such passion? And yet, the account of these two apparent geniuses devolving into bickering schoolchildren is endlessly readable and bittersweetly comic. VERDICT An outstanding and entertaining book that could have surprising appeal beyond its intended literary audience. Readers who give it a chance will soon find themselves unable to put it down. [See Prepub Alert, 6/6/16.]--Herman Sutter, St. Agnes Acad., Houston

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2016

The almost legendary tale of Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson's very public literary debate is told with great sympathy and skill by Beam (columnist, The Boston Globe; American Crucifixion). From this feud, ostensibly begun over Nabokov's translation of Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, he has fashioned a kind of Euripidean tragedy on the self-destructive power of the ego. On one level it is a story of two titans of modern American literature coming to verbal blows over vocabulary and syntax, but more importantly, and more universally, it is the story of a generous friendship collapsing under the weight of reputation and the desperate need to have the final say. Beam is a natural storyteller and lucid scholar. The intellectual back-and-forth (mostly glimpsed through letters and diary entries) is fascinating--who would ever imagine that the incorrect use of the past participle could evoke such passion? And yet, the account of these two apparent geniuses devolving into bickering schoolchildren is endlessly readable and bittersweetly comic. VERDICT An outstanding and entertaining book that could have surprising appeal beyond its intended literary audience. Readers who give it a chance will soon find themselves unable to put it down. [See Prepub Alert, 6/6/16.]--Herman Sutter, St. Agnes Acad., Houston

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.