Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale FireAda and other Nabokov works here.

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 3 January, 2022

Describing his dinner with Ada and her family in Bellevue Hotel in Mont Roux, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the two agents of Lemorio (the flamboyant comedian) and their adopted child, a lovely Eurasian lad, who had recently been slain in a night-club fracas:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 3 January, 2022

Describing Victor Vitry’s film version of his novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the lovely leading lady, Norwegian-born Gedda Vitry (the director’s wife who played Theresa, a character in Van’s novel), and compares Theresa to some lewd elf:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 1 January, 2022

Describing Victor Vitry’s film version of his novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Olympic Games held in Berlin and the final football match in which the Americans beat the Germans by three goals to one:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 31 December, 2021

Describing his father’s death in a mysterious airplane disaster, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions two scholars who had mysteriously vanished (perhaps dying under false names in the never-explained accident above the smiling ocean) at the ‘eleventh hour:’

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 29 December, 2021

When Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) meets Greg Erminin in Paris (also known as Lute on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set), Greg asks Van if Ada married Christopher Vinelander or his brother:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 28 December, 2021

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (the narrator and main character) describes the floramors (one hundred palatial brothels built by David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, all over the world in memory of his grandson Eric, the author of an essay entitled "Villa Venus: an Organized Dream"):