Subject
Query on current work
Date
Body
Fellow Nabokovians!--This is sort of a "get-acquainted" message of the
sort VN would doubtless have despised. Something like running around the
company picnic flashing your nametag. Not so different from MLA meetings
come to think of it. I thought I would pass on a few lines about what I
have been working on lately--apart from launching NABOKOV STUDIES and
NABOKV-L. I have greatly expanded the paper I did for the Nice Nabokov
Conference on VN and Captain Mayne Reid, the XIXth century adventure writer
who introduced VN and thousands of other young folk to the American Wild West.
I am still blundering into new Reid references. Most recently, I encountered
an essay about him by Nobelist Czeslaw Milosz who reports that Mayne Reid
was the first book he ever read in Russian and then goes to speak of his
impact on him and his father before him. Also Reid's impact on Polish
literature. Any more Mayne Reid lore out there?
I have also done three pieces for Vladimir Alexandrov's Nabokov Handbook
being put out by Garland: The Eye, Transparent Things, and Look at the
Harlequins! All minor Nabokov but not without their charms. I have been
investigating refs to American popular lit (bestsellers) from the
40s-the60s in Transparent Things. Any ideas out there on this? If there is
any interest in the topic, I can send out my notes thus far. Would you
believe Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn?
I am also doing a piece on the unnamed butterfly in The Eye which I have
identified, but I am still stumped over the identity of "the grave
entymologist" who unifies all of the varieties into a single species. I'll
provide details if any one is interested.
It would be useful for the NABOKV-L net if those of you who are working on
topics put out the word about your work or about things you just idly
wonder about.
Also, I am looking for submissions to NABOKOV STUDIES. Let me know what
you are doing. Details about the journal are available by sending the message
"index NABOKV-L" to "listserv@ucsbvm.bitnet" and then using a GET command
for the two log numbers (one at a time). Don Johnson
sort VN would doubtless have despised. Something like running around the
company picnic flashing your nametag. Not so different from MLA meetings
come to think of it. I thought I would pass on a few lines about what I
have been working on lately--apart from launching NABOKOV STUDIES and
NABOKV-L. I have greatly expanded the paper I did for the Nice Nabokov
Conference on VN and Captain Mayne Reid, the XIXth century adventure writer
who introduced VN and thousands of other young folk to the American Wild West.
I am still blundering into new Reid references. Most recently, I encountered
an essay about him by Nobelist Czeslaw Milosz who reports that Mayne Reid
was the first book he ever read in Russian and then goes to speak of his
impact on him and his father before him. Also Reid's impact on Polish
literature. Any more Mayne Reid lore out there?
I have also done three pieces for Vladimir Alexandrov's Nabokov Handbook
being put out by Garland: The Eye, Transparent Things, and Look at the
Harlequins! All minor Nabokov but not without their charms. I have been
investigating refs to American popular lit (bestsellers) from the
40s-the60s in Transparent Things. Any ideas out there on this? If there is
any interest in the topic, I can send out my notes thus far. Would you
believe Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn?
I am also doing a piece on the unnamed butterfly in The Eye which I have
identified, but I am still stumped over the identity of "the grave
entymologist" who unifies all of the varieties into a single species. I'll
provide details if any one is interested.
It would be useful for the NABOKV-L net if those of you who are working on
topics put out the word about your work or about things you just idly
wonder about.
Also, I am looking for submissions to NABOKOV STUDIES. Let me know what
you are doing. Details about the journal are available by sending the message
"index NABOKV-L" to "listserv@ucsbvm.bitnet" and then using a GET command
for the two log numbers (one at a time). Don Johnson