S. Blackwell: I have not noticed that the discussion of "56 days" has become less than cordial...I do think Anthony Stadlen's discovery is vital, but I do not believe that it is closed to further questioning.

 

JM: Is it only an impression of mine, or did Nabokov in fact reply to some of Alfred Appel's questions with an affectionate kind of mockery? In his fiction this happened, in a more cruel vein, with Mr. Goodman, Sebastian Knight's secretary.*  I wonder if the importance of the "52" is also confirmed by some other element that can be obtained from the novel proper. While addressing non-Russian readers Nabokov sometimes advanced special explanations (such as in the example from RLSK, below, when he cites Chekhov's "The Black Monk" but not "Hamlet", or those small details and nuances which he clarifies in his Foreword to Bend Sinister), for this suggests that he wanted certain jokes, patterns and images to be understood, even by his not so-attentive readers. Wouldn't that have been the case with the car-registration numbers having been emphasized by the "Q" and "Cu" letters, and the 56-52 motif?

(Unfortunately, playing the devil's advocate  has confused me...What is the invaluable cue, after all?). 

 

 

 

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* - "The first of these stories (which Mr Goodman considers to be extremely typical of 'post-war undergraduate life} depicts Sebastian showing a girl friend from London the sights of Cambridge. 'And this is the Dean's window,' he said; then smashing the pane with a stone, he added: 'And this is the Dean.' Needless to say that Sebastian has been pulling Mr Goodman's leg: the story is as old as the University itself.

Let us look at the second one. During a short vacation trip to Germany (1921? 1922?) Sebastian, one night, being annoyed by the caterwauls in the street, started to pelt the offenders with miscellaneous objects including an egg. Presently, a policeman knocked at his door, bringing back all these objects minus the egg.

This is from an old (or, as Mr Goodman would say, pre-war') Jerome K. Jerome book. Leg-pulling again.

Third story: Sebastian speaking of his very first novel (unpublished and destroyed) explained that it was about a fat young student who travels home to find his mother married to his uncle; this uncle, an ear-specialist, had murdered the student's father.

Mr Goodman misses the joke.

Fourth: Sebastian in the summer of 1922 had overworked himself and, suffering from hallucinations, used to see a kind of optical ghost — a black-robed monk moving swiftly towards him from the sky.

This is a little harder: a short story by Chekhov.

Fifth..." (RLSK)