Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0002573, Wed, 19 Nov 1997 13:40:29 -0800

Subject
Re: FYI-nabokov (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Mary Bellino <iambe@javanet.com>

The New York Observer, and Ron Rosenbaum's article, can be read online
ONLY if you subscribe to America Online (and have the latest version
of their software; I had to perform a laborious upgrade first). If you
can get onto AOL, the keyword for the Observer is NYO.

It's a fairly good article; Rosenbaum is one of the more enjoyable
magazine journalists around. Well, barring a piece he had in a recent
Esquire on JD Salinger, which was one of the worst articles I've ever
read in my entire life. Someone should have told Esquire's editors
that there's not much left to say on that particular subject.

I would love to see the collection before it is dispersed. Last
summer, in a bookstore in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a friend of mine
found a British edition of Donne's poems that she is convinced is
inscribed (though not signed) by VN: "To Vera (avec accent), Christmas
1938." Although I raised about 99 reasonable objections to this
thesis, it is just (barely) conceivable that he picked up the book on
his trip to England in 1938 or so, and inscribed it in English because
he was just at that time engaged in writing a novel in English. (At
least, I can spin out a plausible story about it, given a few drinks
first.) So I am interested in seeing as many of VN's inscriptions as
possible, for purposes of comparison. I can't lose: if it wasn't
signed by VN I am proved right, and if it was I'm delighted.

The annotated copies of Ada and Pale Fire seem to me priceless --
apparently many jokes, anagrams, puns etc are explained in marginal
notes. Let's hope these go to a research library and not to a private
collector!