A Rejoinder from Dmitri Nabokov

IN his review [NR, Nov. 7] of Andrew Field’s recent book on (or, rather, at) my father [Vladimir Nabokov], Jeffrey Meyers, who I am sure meant well, swallowed and regurgitated, quite indiscriminately, what is in fact an unscholarly, error-ridden, and viciously mendacious text, compounding matters by certain misreadings and exaggerations of his own.

A Trib column recently cited the view that it was better in the old days, when lying scoundrels could be dealt with by horsewhip rather than lawsuit. We can do neither with Field, since I don’t relish jail and since Field waited for the subject of his libel to be safely dead, and unable to defend himself. I do plan to comment more fully on Field’s book elsewhere. For now, I would simply like to point out the more blatant errors and slurs that Meyers, who evidently did not have the frame of reference required to evaluate Field, has taken at face value and sometimes amplified.

DN

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Dmitri Nabokov

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IN his review [NR, Nov. 7] of Andrew Field’s recent book on (or, rather, at) my father [Vladimir Nabokov], Jeffrey Meyers, who I am sure meant well, swallowed and regurgitated, quite indiscriminately, what is in fact an unscholarly, error-ridden, and viciously mendacious text, compounding matters by certain misreadings and exaggerations of his own.

A Trib column recently cited the view that it was better in the old days, when lying scoundrels could be dealt with by horsewhip rather than lawsuit. We can do neither with Field, since I don’t relish jail and since Field waited for the subject of his libel to be safely dead, and unable to defend himself. I do plan to comment more fully on Field’s book elsewhere. For now, I would simply like to point out the more blatant errors and slurs that Meyers, who evidently did not have the frame of reference required to evaluate Field, has taken at face value and sometimes amplified.