EDNOTE: Ellen Pifer is a former president of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society and the author of the ground-breaking NABOKOV AND THE NOVEL (Cambridge: Havard U.P.1980). She is the editor of the new volume _Vladimir Nabokov's LOLITA: A Casebook

----- Original Message -----

From: Ellen Pifer

To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum ; epifer@udel.edu

Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 11:49 AM

Subject: Re: Fw: Julian Barnes

In Barnes's clever novel, Flaubert's Parrot, the narrator refers several times to Nabokov, both to Humbert Humbert in Lolita and to Nabokov's lecture on Madame Bovary. Most of the references are implicitly or explicitly laudatory. In Ch. 4: "The Flaubert Bestiary," however, the narrator (politely) challenges VN's translation of Emma Bovary's dog, une petite levrette d'Italie (a small greyhound bitch) as a "whippet." The narrator states, "Whether he [VN] is zoologically correct or not, he certainly loses the sex of the animal, which seems to me important."

Ellen Pifer

D. Barton Johnson wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: Sergey Karpukhin
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDUSent: Monday, March 24, 2003 5:50 AMSubject: Julian Barnes
Dear Nabokovians,Could anyone provide information about the English writer Julian Barnes's connection with VN? In Brian Boyd's biography Barnes is mentioned in the Acknowledgements, but his name is not in the Index.Thank you.Sergey Karpukhin