Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0000290, Fri, 8 Jul 1994 12:58:22 -0700

Subject
Re: LOLITA geography queries (fwd)
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 1994 11:50:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>


One of my students, Paul Kriloff, wrote an honor's thesis for me where,
among other things, he deals with LOLITA's geography. I will quote a part
of his thesis here since it addresses two of the questions you pose:

"Conception Park is a masterful touch... Nabokov was forced to rewrite
geography of Texas by one letter to make this work, though, since
Concepcion Park and Conception, Texas both exist but Conception Park does
not [his footnote here is to US Geological Survey, Texas]. Shakespeare, New
Mexico is also not imaginary, as Appel has already noted [Appel, Comments
to Annotated Lolita, 384]."

Galya Diment adds (apparently from the same source) that Shakespeare, New
Mexico may be found in the _U.S. Geological Survey, New Mexico_. This last
may the most useful singly source for such questions.