Subject
Re: VN on Melville? (fwd)
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From: "Peter A.Kartsev" <petr@glas.apc.org>
Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> Always wondered...what was Nabokov's impression of
> Melville? So far I've only encountered N's famous
> complaint that a poorly drawn butterfly on the title
> page of N's Collected Poems was as meaningless "as
> would be a picture of a tuna fish on the jacket of
> Moby Dick." (The ferocious Sperm Whale on the cover
> of my Penguin Classic edition will never look the
> same).
>
> -- Andrew Robinson
VN mentions that he "still loves" Melville in one of the interviews
(Strong Opinions, p.64 in my Vintage paperback edition).
And (irrelevantly, perhaps) the image of Melville at breakfast,
feeding a sardine to his cat, is among those he would have liked to
have filmed (ibid., p.60-61).
Peter Kartsev
Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> Always wondered...what was Nabokov's impression of
> Melville? So far I've only encountered N's famous
> complaint that a poorly drawn butterfly on the title
> page of N's Collected Poems was as meaningless "as
> would be a picture of a tuna fish on the jacket of
> Moby Dick." (The ferocious Sperm Whale on the cover
> of my Penguin Classic edition will never look the
> same).
>
> -- Andrew Robinson
VN mentions that he "still loves" Melville in one of the interviews
(Strong Opinions, p.64 in my Vintage paperback edition).
And (irrelevantly, perhaps) the image of Melville at breakfast,
feeding a sardine to his cat, is among those he would have liked to
have filmed (ibid., p.60-61).
Peter Kartsev