On 12/12/06 15:33, "Chaswe@AOL.COM" <Chaswe@AOL.COM> wrote:

VN: I am an American writer, born in Russian and educated in  England....

This is an interesting quote. VN’s response  seems precise, truthful and diplomatic; but if that’s all he said, then it evades Toffler’s question, and fails to answer it. Perhaps there is some other quote where VN specifically replies to the question about his strong sense of national identity. I assume VN carried an American passport in 1973 (if that’s when the interview took place). Presumably Albert Einstein and Wernher von Braun also carried American passports, but I find it extremely difficult to think of either of them as Americans, or as in any way products of American cultural values and educational systems.

Charles: your reaction underlines my recent comments on VN’s “nationality.”

   Until we decide which meaning[s] of “American” are relevant, any disagreements we may have on “pigeon-holing” VN (which, as SES reminds us, is a most UN-Nabokovian travesty) remain pointless. IF you insist that “American” means or subsumes “product of American cultural values and educational systems” we are locked in a typical semantic loop! I suppose we could all grind out a long, generally acceptable working definintion of “American cultural values” BUT (one of VN’s grands mais’s!) they constitute a rare old mess of molten pottage. Will the REAL American Culture please STAND UP? Considering all the X-American variants from African-, Hispanic-, RedNeck-, UpDike-, DownMarket-, we are left with the equivalent of calling both Shakespeare and Flaubert EUROPEAN writers. True, but not a riotous bulls-eye.

Your mention of Einstein reminds us that both he and VN gained freedom from a murderous dictatorship. Unsurprisingly, they both expressed STRONG life-long gratitude to the USA (warts and all — speaking of which, Einstein & Morgenstern [already US citizens] accompanied Goedel when the latter faced his own “interview/exams” for US citizenship. During the cab ride, Goedel, the world’s greatest logician,  suddenly announced he had detected a logical inconsistency in the US Constitution! His friends, with difficulty, successfully urged him not to mention the matter).

A final irony on Einstein’s exile & the notion of “false nationalisms”: one reason we won World War II was Hitler’s antipathy to what he called “Jewish” science!

Stan Kelly-Bootle

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