PASSINGS

Alfred Appel Jr., 75, a Northwestern University English professor who was a leading expert on Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov and a scholar of modern art and jazz, died of heart failure May 2 at a hospital in Evanston, Ill., according to his daughter Karen Oshman.

As a Cornell University undergraduate, Appel studied under Nabokov and in 1970 produced one of his best-known works, “The Annotated Lolita.”

The book laid out the layers of literary references and word play in Nabokov’s story of a middle-aged man’s obsession with a young girl, and helped push a novel some had condemned as obscene squarely into the literary canon, said Samuel Hynes, professor emeritus of literature at Princeton University.

A wide-ranging intellect led Appel into all aspects of 20th century art. His book “Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce” looked at the musical form within the context of other artistic movements at the time.

Appel’s book “changes your understanding of the first half of the century, it connects jazz to painting, sculpture, advertising, graphic design,” said author and jazz critic Gary Giddins. “For a variety of reasons, among them racism, jazz has never been talked about in the academy in the same way you’d talk about Mondrian or Matisse.”

Born Jan. 31, 1934, in Brooklyn, N.Y., Appel spent two years at Cornell before a stint in the Army. He transferred to Columbia University, where he received bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in English literature.

He became an emeritus professor at Northwestern in 2000.

--

news.obits@latimes.com