Katya/RHB: The New York Times Book Review,
January 2, 2011, page 23, Notebook, Masters of the Form, by Jennifer B.
McDonald:: Or consider Mary McCarthy (Wilson's third wife, as it happens), whose
1962 review of Nabokov's "Pale Fire" opened up vistas few others had ever
seen..."
JM: I haven't EW/VN's corrrespondence at
hand. I remember that Wilson's next wife, not Mary McCarthy, was one of the few,
at the time of VN's difficulties in finding a publisher for Lolita, who wrote
favourably and sensibly about it. Mary's review is, of course,
brilliant although she didn't find the crown jewels...
As a non-sighting, or a ghostly one, I read today LFVerissimo
on Hitchcock's "The Birds" set in relation to the recent deaths of hundreds of
birds in Arkansas, US and in Sweden. Veríssimo mentioned Hitchcock's
non-conclusiveness (also for the absence of explanation about why the birds
started to attack people) and the disharmony between mankind and the animal
world, before he wondered at the recent paserine disaster. It was as if the
birds were crashing against a feigned remoteness in the glassy
sky...
This time, though, the disharmony seems to be greater for
somethings unexplainable menaces now both birds and
humans...