Samuel Newhouse's defense of Lorrie Moore took the words right off of my keyboard, where they'd been slowly gathering their wits. But he has made every point I would have made, eloquently. The idea that Lorrie Moore, one of the most gifted living American writers, managed to gull The New Yorker into publishing a piece of plagiarism . . . well, words are failing me again.

Fellow Nabokovians, you may not care for the story, or for the technique, but for heaven's sake let's allow that Ms. Moore is following her own artistic star. Assuming that she expects her readers to recognize a paraphrase of one of the most famous short stories ever written, perhaps we should be asking, What is the intent of "Referential"? Why did Moore choose this unusual approach? Indeed, in what other ways might it be "referential"?

Best,

J. Morris