Word: wystan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...discusses Indochina with Andre Malraux and observes that the Frenchman has a tic that "is something like a snort from the nose, and when he becomes excited and voluble, it sounds like the exhaust from a car." He visits W.H. Auden in a completely unheated New York City loft. "Wystan started up some queer kind of little stove, but we sat in our overcoats and our breath went up in vapor." Vladimir Nabokov comes for a visit, and they start arguing about how various English and Russian words should be pronounced. Wilson concludes that the novelist has "something...