----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 4:49 PM
Subject: reply to Jennifer re roommate

Dear Jen,

Roommate has only one meaning of which I am aware.

"roommate" in the sense of one who shared with her the abandoned library - and/or other empty public spaces - when others were all at the "big game"

There is no such meanning of the word roommate. If the nice frail person is not Hazel's roommate, she is someone else's. We hear Hazel doing her homework in her parents house, as she calls out the words she doesn't understand in a poem that has been assigned (as was her trip to the haunted barn), so it's not a question of Spring Break.

Hazel 's roommate is either a rare Nabokov error, or Shade caught in a prevarication.

Carolyn