For the first time in my (not very
thorough) experience of reading or browsing through Umberto Eco's books, did I
come across the name of Nabokov. Cf.
Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists, from Homer to
Joyce, Macklehose Press, London, 2009.
It appears in an illustration, on page
255, which reproduces the cover of "The New Yorker", 18 October
1969, by Saul Steinberg.
It is inserted in Ch.15 "Excess, from Rabelais
Onwards."
Writes Eco: "At this point we find ourselves
faced with two trends, both present in the history of lists but even more so in
modern and post-modern literature. There is a list coherent by excess
that nonetheless puts together entities that have some form of kinship among
them; and there are lists, which in principle are ot necessarily required to be
excessively long, which are an assembly of things deliberately devoid of any
apparent reciprocal relationship, so much so that such cases have been referred
to as chaotic enumeration..."
In the magazine cover the name Nabokov is found
right after Gogol, before Hi Nabor, While-U-Wait, U
Turn.