Greetings, NabLers: I might as well confess that I have these past
10 days quietly resumed my duties at the helm, while SES takes a
well-earned break from our weighty responsibility to you.
Re: Carolyn's question below, I think the answer is in the poem:
Nabokov must have seen the headline tacked to some English
professor's door at Wellesley or Cornell. For a similar collection
of "real-life puns," see the U. of Chicago Philosophy Department's
web site, which I happened upon just yesterday. They have a dozen
or more photographs of random signs that unwittingly (or sometimes
wittingly) evoke great philosophical debates.
~SB
Dear Sandy,
What a great find - well,
it's news to me anyway. Had no idea there really was a Chapman
in baseball. Of course I was a Dodger girl and it all happened
years before I was born. Can we be sure that VN was aware that
his joke had reality to back it up? Was he even in the US in
'38? I could look it up, but I should have been out the door
hours ago.
best wishes from
Carolyn