If Nabokov's writing hasn't dated as much as some other writers, it's because so much of what he wrote wasn't tied to the way of life of a past era. That doesn't quite apply to Lolita.
Satire of the provincialism of the 1950s reads as provincial now. 50 years from now, if we've moved on from Oprah, reality TV, and the rest of what obsesses people now, satirical references to it will be pretty flat to future readers.
Not to mention the fact that the prose is a joy to read. One can't say that about Mann's leaden prose.
Mann wrote in a rich German that's difficult to render in English translation. Our loss.
‘Pale Fire’ is simply sui generis. There's nothing like it and it's been called the greatest novel of the 20th century by more than one informed critic. If it's even a novel. It created its own genre.
Well, it will rate high in a list of works of the genre it created. It's less successful as a novel than Lolita.
Lolita is a good enough novel. It just doesn't deserve to be overpraised.
“doesn’t deserve to be overpraised” is a tautology. The humor in Lolita goes well beyond topical jibes at pop culture (a culture which is much more prevalent now than in the Truman-era America he was writing about). It’s sophisticated literary wit: multilingual puns, references to all sorts of other texts. It was written nearly sixty years ago and has not really dated. As popular now as ever. Nabokov is impossible to attach to any literary movements and thus is not dated by them (in way that say D.H. Lawrence is). Pale Fire is one of the most intricate literary works of all time. And like Lolita, sad and hilarious at same time.