Simon Karlinsky (1924-2009) was a prolific, provocative, and controversial scholar of modern Russian literature, of sexual politics, and of music. He held advanced degrees from Harvard University (MA, 1961); and the University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 1964), where he taught in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures from 1964 to 1991. Among his path-breaking publications were two studies of the life and works of Marina Tsvetaeva (in 1966 and 1985), The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol (1976), Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin (1985), and editions of the letters of Anton Chekhov (1973), as well as the letters of Russian emigre writers and the correspondence between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson (1979; 2001). He was a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, and a wide range of professional journals.
