In the fall of 1958 my friend, Hoddy Schepman, started his PhD. work in Comparative Literature at Cornell. Before he left for Ithaca he told me he was taking a course in the modern novel taught by Vladimir Nabokov, whose notoriety and fame had rocketed with the US publication of Lolita earlier in the year.
When he came home at Christmas, he told me that there was nothing comparative or maybe even modern about Nabakov’s course. According to Vlad the “modern novel” began and ended with Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, so it was the only one he planned to teach that fall. Hoddy said it was the best class he’d ever taken.