Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

After his father's sudden death Hugh Person (the main character in VN's novel Transparent Things, 1972) moves to Geneva, has homard à l'américaine for dinner and goes to find his first whore: 

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) the spectral narrators discuss the history of a pencil:

According to Mr. R. (the writer in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972), all he can offer his publisher is not Tralala but the first and dullest tome of his Tralatitions:

In VN's play Izobretenie Val'sa ("The Waltz Invention," 1938) Salvator Waltz wants to rule the world from Palmora (a distant island, Palmera in the English version) and exclaims: “Na Palmoru, skorey na Palmoru!” (“To Palmera, to Palmera as soon as possible!”):

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Hugh Person kills his wife Armande in his sleep, dreaming of Giulia Romeo (a prostitute whom he had picked up on his first trip abroad):

According to Mr. R. (the writer in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972), the name of his secretary, Mr. Tamworth, is pronounced like that of the English breed of black-blotched swine:

Reading the galleys of Mr. R.’s Tralatitions, Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) ponders the name of an incidental character "Adam von Librikov:"

Compared to the reality of Armande, his meeting with Mr. R. seems to Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) all sham and waxworks:

After his first meeting with Armande Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) describes her in his diary as “slender, athletic, lethal:”

In a diary he kept in fits and starts Hugh wrote that night in Versex:

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) calls his odd muse “my versipel” and his last poem, “this transparent thingum:”

Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roam

Throughout the house with, in my fist, a comb

Or a shoehorn, which turns into the spoon

I eat my egg with. In the afternoon

You drive me to the library. We dine