In a message dated 19/09/2005 05:33:08 GMT Standard Time, chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu writes:

Or do you think, as Andrew Field evidently did, that when Nabokov made
reference to a chimp making a drawing of its prison bars, that this was
granite-like fact, and that the newspaper article mentioned really did exist
beyond VN's imagination.

I must confess that I took it that VN at least thought the article existed, and I do not think I am entirely pedantic or lacking in humour. VN said all art is deception, but he was also the fine teacher who made his students study the map of Dublin when reading "Ulysses".

Nobody has yet answered my question whether, and how, the falsehood of his claim that a publisher wanted him to replace Lolita with a boy has been proven, or merely asserted. This always seemed to me an odd thing for a publisher to want, indeed I simply did not understand it, but I assumed that if VN wrote that it had happened, it had -- more or less -- happened.

Anthony Stadlen