palimpsest
"I also, suddenly, recall with shame the only time I was a judge for a literary prize (with Elizabeth Hardwick and Professor Harry Levin of Harvard). Lizzie and I wanted the prize to go to Morte d'Urban by J.F. Powers. Levin argued powerfully for Nabokov's Pale Fire. Lolita, yes, I said, but to this latest overelaborate bit of academic funning, no. Levin then said that he would accede to our bad taste if we would drop from the list of finalists a book so terrible that it might destroy literature. Cravenly, we erased Naked Lunch. Yet even then, I suspected that Levin's hatred of the book was proof of its merit. I was never again a judge."
- More information on Gore Vidal. (Free registration to The New York Times required.)
- Many thanks to Professor D. Barton Johnson (editor of the NABOKOV-L forum).
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