Subject
Re: from Ron Rosenbaum re: Botkin Hosital insanity wing]
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Date
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Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:20:58 -0400
From: nabokv-l@UTK.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] from Ron Rosenbaum re: Botkin Hosital insanity wing]
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
-------- Original Message --------
Subject:
from Ron Rosenbaum re: Botkin Hosital insanity wing
Date:
Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:54:59 -0700
From:
palefire30 <palefire30@YAHOO.COM>
To:
<NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Dear List Members,
In response to Ron Rosenbaum suggestion, I would like to point out that Pale Fire was published in 1962, while JFK's assassination took place on the 22nd of november 1963. Before that date, it seems to me that Lee Harvey Oswald was a rather unsignificant left-wing agitator (his assassination attempt on Wesker dates back to 1963). Even in the case he would have heard of him, Nabokov could hardly have expected the reader to draw a connection between him and the character of Gradus, not to speak of the incredible prescience it would have entailed to picture him as an assassin.
Once you consider this, the link between Pr. Botkin and Botkin's hospital becomes extremely tenuous...
Maybe it remains interesting as an illustartion of what Nabokov meant by giving such a central place to coïncidence in his worldview - how unexpectedly easily they occur, how they give the illusion (or reveal the reality) of a "hidden pattern" running behind matter of fact reality.
Laurence Hochard
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