Subject
Re: NABOKOVIANA REDUX
Date
Body
From: Earl Sampson <esampson@post.harvard.edu>
I had the gift of a related coincidence many years ago, also on a college
campus. While on a non-academic trip to Seattle one summer, I drove to the
University of Washington campus to visit the library. I parked in the
underground garage, and emerged from there onto a central plaza of that
beautiful campus. As I looked east, the first object to attract my eye was a
large fountain in the center of the plaza, and the next, directly behind the
fountain from my viewpoint - Mount Rainier (I also had the gift of a clear
day in Seattle). Perhaps the coincidence would not have registered, had I not
just recently re-read Pale Fire.
Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
> From: Vladimir Alexandrov <vladimir@pantheon.yale.edu>
>
> Nabokovian wonders never cease. I ... recall with pleasure that "gift"
> of a "coincidence" in Cambridge last summer when I was leaving the Trinity
> College courtyard after our tour and overheard a mother explaining to her
> little boy in a stroller (a reincarnation perhaps?) about the
> structure in the middle of the courtyard: "No, no, dear. Not 'mountain,'
> but 'fountain'!"
>
> Maybe it's worth compiling a list of such N-ian anecdotes.
> --------------------------------------
> EDITOR's NOTE.
>
> Vladimir Alexandrov is the author, inter alia, of _Nabokov's
> Otherworld_and editor of the _Garland Guide to Nabokov._
I had the gift of a related coincidence many years ago, also on a college
campus. While on a non-academic trip to Seattle one summer, I drove to the
University of Washington campus to visit the library. I parked in the
underground garage, and emerged from there onto a central plaza of that
beautiful campus. As I looked east, the first object to attract my eye was a
large fountain in the center of the plaza, and the next, directly behind the
fountain from my viewpoint - Mount Rainier (I also had the gift of a clear
day in Seattle). Perhaps the coincidence would not have registered, had I not
just recently re-read Pale Fire.
Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
> From: Vladimir Alexandrov <vladimir@pantheon.yale.edu>
>
> Nabokovian wonders never cease. I ... recall with pleasure that "gift"
> of a "coincidence" in Cambridge last summer when I was leaving the Trinity
> College courtyard after our tour and overheard a mother explaining to her
> little boy in a stroller (a reincarnation perhaps?) about the
> structure in the middle of the courtyard: "No, no, dear. Not 'mountain,'
> but 'fountain'!"
>
> Maybe it's worth compiling a list of such N-ian anecdotes.
> --------------------------------------
> EDITOR's NOTE.
>
> Vladimir Alexandrov is the author, inter alia, of _Nabokov's
> Otherworld_and editor of the _Garland Guide to Nabokov._