Subject
VN and Gatsby again (fwd)
Date
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Dear Nabokovians,
I hope that it's not too late to add to the VN-FSF thread. As it happens, I
am teaching The Great Gatsby this spring. Nick's descriptions of his
wanderings around New York City at twilight remind me very much of
some of the narrators in Nabokov's early stories. At one point, Nick
muses: "I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women
from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter
into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes,
in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden
streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded
through a door into the warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan
twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes . . . ." Doesn't this remind
you of "A Nursery Tale"?
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
I hope that it's not too late to add to the VN-FSF thread. As it happens, I
am teaching The Great Gatsby this spring. Nick's descriptions of his
wanderings around New York City at twilight remind me very much of
some of the narrators in Nabokov's early stories. At one point, Nick
muses: "I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women
from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter
into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes,
in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden
streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded
through a door into the warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan
twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes . . . ." Doesn't this remind
you of "A Nursery Tale"?
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney