A Letter to Edmund WilsonAuthor(s): Vladimir NabokovSource: The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter, 1979), p. 121Published by: Kenyon CollegeStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4335023Accessed: 24/04/2010 14:16

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A LETTER TO EDMUND WILSON Vladimir Nabokov

April 7, 1947

Dear Bunny,

I have not had a word from you for ages. How are you? Did you get my Russian poem? Roman visited us recently and thought highly of it. He flew over with my friend George Hessen for the week-end and we had a delightful time-which would have been still more delightful if you had been there.

My novel is due to appear in the beginning of June. Someday you will read it again. They sent me a most absurd blurb and after an ex- change of telegrams Tate wrote a new one. He has been awfully nice throughout. I have reached Tolstoy in my Wellesley course; it is going to be repeated next year, but my position is still insecure and the salary meagre-and I have little hope that Bend Sinister brings me any money. I am writing two things now 1. a short novel about a man who liked little girls-and it's going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea-and 2. a new type of autobiography-a scientific attempt to unravel and trace back all the tangled threads of one's personality-and the provisional title is The Person in Question.

I have finished my main entomological paper, and butterflies will be more or less shelved for a year or so. We are thinking of going to Colorado or somewhere this summer, if luck lays an egg. Dmitri is doing very well at school this season, getting wonderful reports, and we hope he gets a scholarship at a good boarding school. He is 6 feet tall. French lovers of literature do not love the author of bong and 'bsolument, I learn. I have re-read your Wound and the Bow, and the one on Hemingway is excellent-except when you explain fluctuations in his work by fluctuations in the market. I have also read Homeward, Angel which I had always been afraid to touch-and how right I was! There are kingfisher-flashes here and there but on the whole it is very poor stuff. I have reread The Amer. Tragedy-no special comment.

Spring is coming on rollerskates. When shall we see both of you?

Yours ever,

V.