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and The Family Moskat (1950),focused on a Polish-Jewish familybetween the world wars — theworld of European Jewry that nolonger exists. Complementing theseworks were his writings set after thewar, such as Enemies, A Love Story(1972), whose protagonists weresurvivors of the Holocaust seeking tocreate new lives for themselves.Vladimir Nabokov(1889-1977)Like Singer, Vladimir Nabokovwas an Eastern European immigrant.Born into an affluentfamily in Czarist Russia, he came tothe United States in 1940 andgained U.S. citizenship five yearslater. From 1948 to 1959, he taughtliterature at Cornell University inupstate New York; in 1960 he movedpermanently to Switzerland.Nabokov is best known for hisnovels, which include the autobiographicalPnin (1957), about anineffectual Russian emigré professor,and Lolita (U.S. edition, 1958),about an educated, middle-agedEuropean who becomes infatuatedwith a 12-year-old American girl.Nabokov’s pastiche novel, Pale Fire(1962), another successful venture,focuses on a long poem by an imaginarydead poet and the commentarieson it by a critic whose writingsoverwhelm the poem and takeon unexpected lives of their own.Nabokov is an important writerfor his stylistic subtlety, deft satire,and ingenious innovations in form,which have inspired such novelistsas John Barth. Nabokov was awareJOHN CHEEVERPhoto © Nancy Cramptonof his role as a mediator betweenthe Russian and American literaryworlds; he wrote a book on Gogoland translated Pushkin’s EugeneOnegin. His daring, somewhatexpressionist subjects helpedintroduce 20th-century Europeancurrents into the essentially realistAmerican fictional tradition.Nabokov’s tone, partly satirical andpartly nostalgic, also suggested anew serio-comic emotional registermade use of by writers such asThomas Pynchon, who combinesthe opposing notes of wit and fear.John Cheever (1912-1982)John Cheever often has beencalled a “novelist of manners.” Heis also known for his elegant, suggestiveshort stories, which scrutinizethe New York business worldthrough its effects on the businessmen,their wives, children, andfriends.A wry melancholy and never quitequenched but seemingly hopelessdesire for passion or metaphysicalcertainty lurks in the shadows ofCheever’s finely drawn, Chekhoviantales, collected in The Way SomePeople Live (1943), The Housebreakerof Shady Hill (1958), SomePeople, Places, and Things That WillNot Appear in My Next Novel(1961), The Brigadier and the GolfWidow (1964), and The World ofApples (1973). His titles reveal hischaracteristic nonchalance, playfulness,and irreverence, and hintat his subject matter.Cheever also published severalnovels — The Wapshot Scandal105