Subject
Fw: More on EYE advert query
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Bellino" <iambe@rcn.com>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (65
lines) ------------------
> From Mary Bellino (iambe@rcn.com):
>
> I went back into the Times archive and I did find two small
> ads for The Eye before Sept 1965. The most interesting ran
> on August 27; it is a tiny text ad of about 1 column inch.
> It reads:
>
> After Herzog, what?
> We suggest
> "THE EYE"
> by Vladimir Nabokov
> your bookstore
> Phaedra Publishers, Inc
>
> ["your bookstore" was perhaps intended to be replaced by the
> name of a particular bookstore that would run this ad in its
> local market, thus advertising both itself and the book]
>
> I cannot believe that VN would have approved this ad; Boyd
> reports that later versions proposed to compare him with
> Turgenev, Fitzgerald, and Conrad, and on these Mrs Nabokov
> wrote: "He does not want to be compared to anyone in the
> advertisements because you should realize that you are
> publishing the work of a completely individual writer...."
> (VNAY 501; all of the correspondence with Phaedra cited by
> Boyd is listed as dating from Sept 13 to Sept 23, 1965. The
> Nabokovs were of course at this time already living in
> Montreux).
>
> What is most interesting about the ad is the mention of
> Herzog; Nabokov was around this time beginning to work on
> ADA, in which the novel appears transmogrified into "The
> Puffer by Mr. Dukes."
> Ads for the following books appeared on the same page: Frank
> Brady's Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy; Ian Fleming's
> The Man with the Golden Gun; LeCarre's The Looking Glass
> War; a book on the psychic/prophet Jeane Dixon; and a hot
> little number by HRF Keating whose description begins "They
> were the sexiest girls Superintendent Ironside had ever
> seen..." Surmounting the Nabokov ad is the helpful public
> service message "Don't empty ashtrays into the toilet! Each
> flush uses 5 to 8 gallons." All in all a page almost too
> good to be true: note the roundup of Nabokovian themes in
> the other books -- chess, guns, spies, mirrors, messages
> from the beyond, sexy young girls, detectives.
>
> Another tiny ad ran at the end of July; this merely
> announced that The Eye was "Coming soon from Phaedra
> Publishers" and gives August 30 as the publication date.
>
> DBJ says that he thinks he actually saw the ad that compared
> The Eye to James Bond; if that's the case, given the dates
> of the Nabokovs' correspondence with Phaedra cited in VNAY,
> it must have appeared before Sept 13, 1965, and perhaps well
> before, given that the Nabokovs were in Montreux -- IF
> Nabokov saw the published ad and not a prepress proof. Thus
> my next move would be to check further back in the magazines
> I mentioned in my previous posting, plus the Saturday
> Evening Post and the news magazines. I am wondering however
> whether Phaedra could even have afforded to advertise in any
> of these; as Boyd reports, in early 1965 the press was
> "little more than a letterhead"; by 1969 they were "on the
> brink of bankruptcy" (SL 442-43).
>
> Mary
From: "Mary Bellino" <iambe@rcn.com>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (65
lines) ------------------
> From Mary Bellino (iambe@rcn.com):
>
> I went back into the Times archive and I did find two small
> ads for The Eye before Sept 1965. The most interesting ran
> on August 27; it is a tiny text ad of about 1 column inch.
> It reads:
>
> After Herzog, what?
> We suggest
> "THE EYE"
> by Vladimir Nabokov
> your bookstore
> Phaedra Publishers, Inc
>
> ["your bookstore" was perhaps intended to be replaced by the
> name of a particular bookstore that would run this ad in its
> local market, thus advertising both itself and the book]
>
> I cannot believe that VN would have approved this ad; Boyd
> reports that later versions proposed to compare him with
> Turgenev, Fitzgerald, and Conrad, and on these Mrs Nabokov
> wrote: "He does not want to be compared to anyone in the
> advertisements because you should realize that you are
> publishing the work of a completely individual writer...."
> (VNAY 501; all of the correspondence with Phaedra cited by
> Boyd is listed as dating from Sept 13 to Sept 23, 1965. The
> Nabokovs were of course at this time already living in
> Montreux).
>
> What is most interesting about the ad is the mention of
> Herzog; Nabokov was around this time beginning to work on
> ADA, in which the novel appears transmogrified into "The
> Puffer by Mr. Dukes."
> Ads for the following books appeared on the same page: Frank
> Brady's Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy; Ian Fleming's
> The Man with the Golden Gun; LeCarre's The Looking Glass
> War; a book on the psychic/prophet Jeane Dixon; and a hot
> little number by HRF Keating whose description begins "They
> were the sexiest girls Superintendent Ironside had ever
> seen..." Surmounting the Nabokov ad is the helpful public
> service message "Don't empty ashtrays into the toilet! Each
> flush uses 5 to 8 gallons." All in all a page almost too
> good to be true: note the roundup of Nabokovian themes in
> the other books -- chess, guns, spies, mirrors, messages
> from the beyond, sexy young girls, detectives.
>
> Another tiny ad ran at the end of July; this merely
> announced that The Eye was "Coming soon from Phaedra
> Publishers" and gives August 30 as the publication date.
>
> DBJ says that he thinks he actually saw the ad that compared
> The Eye to James Bond; if that's the case, given the dates
> of the Nabokovs' correspondence with Phaedra cited in VNAY,
> it must have appeared before Sept 13, 1965, and perhaps well
> before, given that the Nabokovs were in Montreux -- IF
> Nabokov saw the published ad and not a prepress proof. Thus
> my next move would be to check further back in the magazines
> I mentioned in my previous posting, plus the Saturday
> Evening Post and the news magazines. I am wondering however
> whether Phaedra could even have afforded to advertise in any
> of these; as Boyd reports, in early 1965 the press was
> "little more than a letterhead"; by 1969 they were "on the
> brink of bankruptcy" (SL 442-43).
>
> Mary