Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940-1971, Revised and Expanded Edition Book

While scanning through a dictionary all through its thick, authoritarian spine, never will one come across 'friendship' defined as 'the undulation of attitudes'. For these two gentlemen, friendship does not simply start and end; friendship through these letters is often a spectrum in itself, a medium in which their thoughts and moods swimmed, and an element in which the levers of love, arrogance, and indifference were carefully calibrated from letter to letter.

Not all is grim; your to-read list may swell twenty-fold if Nabokov's and Wilson's readings are to be followed (and I tracked them all quite closely). The amount of stuff these two read is at once daunting and miscellaneous. Nabokov recommends Dorothy Sayers, trashes Christie, and while changing his mind about Austen, reports reading Kotzebue's "Lover's Vows", the entire play-withn-the-play shebang; Wilson strenuously pushes for Faulkner and Malraux, continues to bat for Trostsky, Gorki, and alas Lenin. These are only major names, but trivia galore follows: Russian emigres are peppered throughout - Poplavsky, Berberova, Bunin et al. You will see Nabokov discuss the issues of Life and People with speckled parody, you will see Wilson narrate the drama when Roman Jakobson was almost about to fight with French professors for claming a Russian epic discourse was a 19th century forgery.

With great sadness my fingertips registered the thinness of pages which were actually signalling the thinning of a great, intellectual bond. The months and years, the particularity of dates and places, so securing and gladdening when moving in slow jumps - so stolid and unmoving time seemed to be in the early stages - assume a monstrous, unmerciful quality when fleeting quickly. The last ten years of friendship pass by in a matter of twenty or so pages (and this is a three-hundred page book) - September stopped appearing after August, and entire years started vanishing into the hypothetical. So suddenly did the affinity taper towards its end, that I imagined entire events in between dates to console myself that the world must have still been spinning. What happened between May of one year and March of the next? No one will know.

Its overwhelming when you see Nabokov write enthusiastically that its been twenty (20!) years since they first met, and if you have followed the journey throughout, it is hard not to feel the emotions on the verge of spilling as Nabokov, ever the gentleman with the olive branch, restarting again what had abruptly ceased, after a gap of seven years, pens again those comforting words, "Dear Bunny...." and goes on to joke about his friend's 'incomprehensible incomprehension'. He is a punster enwrapped in a coil of human warmth. Contrary to popular opinion, jokes and wordplay are not frivolous throwaways; they reveal the underside of the obvious, the nether sky which underlines any surface or word. He knows that he can play with words, he may flippantly phrase a genuine sentiment, and hurt also, but when it matters most, when it's all said and done, he knows words mean something, and he uses them to the best effect, to bring out the human. Lolita does it, Pnin does it, and so does the man. And that is why he (and he knows this very very well), and we, must remember that words always, always, always, mean something.