Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0008161, Sun, 20 Jul 2003 20:17:02 -0700

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Dmitri Nabokov emendation on Stacy Shiff's VERA
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----- Original Message -----
From: Dmtiri Nabokov
To: 'D. Barton Johnson'
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 4:57 PM
Subject: RE: VN magazines?


I would like to clarify a hasty wisecrack in my post of 19 July. What I meant by "Hasty Pulitzer," as in Harvard's Hasty Pudding, was not that Stacy Schiff's prize was undeserved or hastily awarded, but that her book itself, besides its undisputed virtues, has some imperfections due mainly, as she herself told me, to such extraordinary pressure from the publisher that she could not doublecheck everything, or give me a promised pre-publication look. For instance, the resonant campus love affair attributed to Father never happened, yet it afforded easy fodder for scandal-minded critics. I am fond of Stacy and esteem her work. I shall now expect a reproach from her (our) publisher, who has generally been accurate and dutiful. It is also true that the pressure was motivated by a desire to publish within my father's 100th anniversary year.

DN

[end of post]

Don, let me rattle off the periodicals that come to mind, in no particular order: International Herald Tribune, Est-Vaudois, TLS, TBR, NY Review of Books, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Encounter, The National Review (courtesy of Bill Buckley) Playboy (courtesy of Hugh Hefner), etc.; Psyche and other scientific journals. I'll add whatever else I think of.

With warm greetings,

Dmitri

- ----Original Message-----
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@cox.net]
Sent: samedi, 19. juillet 2003 19:43
To: nabokov
Subject: VN magazines?


Dear Dmitri,

On to less heated matters....

I got to wondering whether you recall the U.S. magazines (and newspapers) that your father subscribed to or regularly read during your years at home.
Amiably, Don
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