Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0011928, Mon, 19 Sep 2005 15:55:45 -0700

Subject
Fwd: Re: Nabokovian blunders
Date
Body
ednote. vn BIOGRAPHER mICHAEL jULIAR WROTE AN WXTREMELY INTERING PIECE ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CHIMP AND HIS DRAWINGS OF BARS. cHECK NABOKV-L ARCHIVE.
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----- Forwarded message from STADLEN@aol.com -----
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 05:08:07 EDT
From: STADLEN@aol.com
Reply-To: STADLEN@aol.com
Subject: Re: Nabokovian blunders
To:

In a message dated 19/09/2005 05:33:08 GMT Standard Time,
chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu writes:

> Or do you think, as Andrew Field evidently did, that when Nabokov made
> reference to a chimp making a drawing of its prison bars, that this was
> granite-like fact, and that the newspaper article mentioned really did exist
> beyond VN's imagination.
>

I must confess that I took it that VN at least thought the article existed,
and I do not think I am entirely pedantic or lacking in humour. VN said all art
is deception, but he was also the fine teacher who made his students study
the map of Dublin when reading "Ulysses".

Nobody has yet answered my question whether, and how, the falsehood of his
claim that a publisher wanted him to replace Lolita with a boy has been proven,
or merely asserted. This always seemed to me an odd thing for a publisher to
want, indeed I simply did not understand it, but I assumed that if VN wrote
that it had happened, it had -- more or less -- happened.

Anthony Stadlen

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