C. Kunin: “…quote from Milton “Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”

[snip] The reader learns in the opening sentence that a man named Nicky Slopen has come back from death [and so on]. Well, doesn't this happen in at least one novel (Soglyadati, or The Eye) by VN, as it does in Dostoevsky (Son smeshnovogo Cheloveko)? Any others?

Jansy Mello: A very apt quote as a tribute to Nabokov’s birthday celebrations: sometimes the written word, an artist’s wordworld, may be as “immortal” and as contagious as a virus…( I just realized that I was repeating Laurie Anderson’s song,* but, on second thoughts, no… I wasn’t).

However, this “essential” survival is unlike the one we encounter in VN’s “The Eye.” VN’s own conscious awareness and sensibility are no longer available, either to him or to us.

Any others? How about the “voice” saluting Hugh Person in “Transparent Things”?

…………………………………………….

Language Is A Virus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvb0-Fm98qI

Paradise

Is exactly like

Where you are right now

Only much much

Better.

[snip]

Language! It's a virus!

[snip]

The one below is more apt for this occasion:

Born, Never Asked Laurie Anderson

It was a large room.
Full of people.
All kinds.
And they had all arrived at the same buidling at more or less the same time.
And they were all free.
And they were all asking themselves the same question:
What is behind that curtain?
You were born.
And so you're free.
So happy birthday.