Stan Kelly-Bootle [ on Stadlen's
"I swear that I am not trying to tantalise [...] please do
not expect anything remotely like "closure"and JM's "brother Isaac was "a real American of almost forty years
standing." This is one of the peculiarities of Nabokov's style.
It plays with what in Gestalt theory is called "closure effect": when
people tend to remember information that remains incomplete, vague,
expecting it to "close". In VN it almost never closes"]
writes:
"surely the "almost forty years" here
is not a matter of "incomplete" or "vague" data. Isaac's "standing" as a "real
American" is not something that can be dated more precisely. Rather, one
envisages periods of gradual "acculturation" that vary from émigré to émigré.
All VN is projecting, I suggest, is that Isaac's assimilation progressed earlier
and more successfully than that of his brother and
sistet-in-law.
JM: Right, "almost forty years" is neither incomplete
nor vague, but my sentence was!
I meant VN's big list of items under "forty this and
forty that", not the particular example about Isaac.
The underlying question was why "forty" and then why, after
having just read S&S with attention to detail did I forget
the sentence Anthony brought up while I displaced
my failed recollection onto other examples dealing with
"forty" (and, unlike A.S-B, I surmised Isaac had been in America long
before his relatives finally fled from Nazi Europe)
To Alexey: it just occurred to me that "turf" in
English corresponds to "torf" ( peat, swamp, manure, decay) and to green lawns
and horse-races as well.
All private editorial communications, without
exception, are
read by both co-editors.