>EDNOTE. I find the ad hominem attitude of this message distasteful and would
>urge all subsequent contributors to avoid personal invective.

There is interesting cultural aspect to this discussion. On one hand, group of people use non ad hominem language to express arguably, if not so, distasteful attitude (quoted passages from chapter ‘Nabokov as Russian writer’ by Mr. Dolinin and Morgan’s spam qualify). Then, there are people busy protecting something they view as honorable that relates to Nabokov and his oeuvre, or just honorable, using language that some observers characterize (or, may be, label?) ad hominem. Well, as someone who described Machado de Assis in context of Nabokov’s passage from TT as ‘another corpse’ or misdirected message in which he suggested that someone related to VN ‘can hang himself’ over Livry, the author of above EDNOTE probably feels closer to the first group. But that does not retract from honor, that vocal, in a Russian way, non-Russian thing that both Sirin and Nabokov shared and people with values must practice. The thing that flares here and there, illuminating Nabokov-L. Come back home, Mr. Dolinin.

George Shimanovich