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Re: Martin Gardner
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[Dear Editors--if you have not sent my prior message re Martin Gardner,
please delete it. If you have please run this corrected, more complete
version anyway.]
In the interest of greater accuracy than my faulty memory can provide on its
own, here is an excerpt from a spring 2008 interview I did with Martin
Gardner, longtime columnist for *Scientific American* and author of *The
Annotated Alice*, among many other titles:
Q: Did you and Vladimir Nabokov know each other?
A: No, I never met him. I exchanged letters with his wife.
Q: Was that before or after Pale Fire?
A: I think that was after *Pale Fire*.
Q: How did you come to quote John Shade in *The Ambidextrous Universe*?
A: I read the book and I liked it… You know he mentions me in his book *Ada*.
Did you know about that?
He was probably annoyed because when I quoted from the poem, I didn’t credit
it to him, I credited it to his imaginary novelist [sic].
Q: But then he credited you as an invented philosopher--
A: And he misspelled my name! I don’t know if he did it on purpose or
accidentally.
.....
Q: So you didn’t know Nabokov personally, but did you have other literary
fans?
A: Isaac Asimov was a fan, and I got to know him fairly well as a result.
I hope this is of interest to at least some members of the list.
Andrea
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please delete it. If you have please run this corrected, more complete
version anyway.]
In the interest of greater accuracy than my faulty memory can provide on its
own, here is an excerpt from a spring 2008 interview I did with Martin
Gardner, longtime columnist for *Scientific American* and author of *The
Annotated Alice*, among many other titles:
Q: Did you and Vladimir Nabokov know each other?
A: No, I never met him. I exchanged letters with his wife.
Q: Was that before or after Pale Fire?
A: I think that was after *Pale Fire*.
Q: How did you come to quote John Shade in *The Ambidextrous Universe*?
A: I read the book and I liked it… You know he mentions me in his book *Ada*.
Did you know about that?
He was probably annoyed because when I quoted from the poem, I didn’t credit
it to him, I credited it to his imaginary novelist [sic].
Q: But then he credited you as an invented philosopher--
A: And he misspelled my name! I don’t know if he did it on purpose or
accidentally.
.....
Q: So you didn’t know Nabokov personally, but did you have other literary
fans?
A: Isaac Asimov was a fan, and I got to know him fairly well as a result.
I hope this is of interest to at least some members of the list.
Andrea
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/