Subject
Rydel: VN Characters
Date
Body
EDITORIAL NOTE: Christine Rydel at Green Valley State University in
Michigan has been working for some years on what promises to be a most
useful Nabokov reference tool--a catalogue of all characters (and names)
mentioned in VN's work. The work, long delayed by technical problems, is
now approaching completion. It will be published by Ardis. Its appearance
will be announced on NABOKV-L. Christine Rydel's description and account
follows.
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A NABOKOV WHO'S WHO: A GUIDE TO PROPER NAMES has
expanded and may even have a new title when Ellendea Proffer
puts it back in the Ardis catalogue. The book currently has
approximately 30,000 entries and is on computer diskettes at
my university's computer center, where someone is
reformatting the data so that I can do a page check for
accuracy and edit the entries after final alphabetization.
The book not only describes characters who have names,
but also locates ANY name--even those of real-life
characters like Napoleon or Chateaubriand or Lawrence Sterne
or Annabelle Lee. It also contains a section devoted to
places, establishments (stores, restaurants, etc.) with
names, works of art (real and fictional), music, works of
literature (real and fictional), and titles of books, poems,
stories, essays, etc. (real and fictional). In addition ALL
characters, named or unnamed, are located. So if someone
wants to find all references to "nurses," they will be
noted, with subsections like: Nurses, Male; Nurses, Female;
Nurses, Fat; Nurses, Helpful, etc. Also main characters will
also be listed (with page references) with all of their
names and the pages where these various names occur. The
pages are keyed to the first editions. If I changed
pagination now to the latest editions, I would NEVER finish
this project. I wanted this book to be as useful as I could
make it. I guess that, in effect, the book will be a
specialized concordance to ALL characters and everything
that has a title or a proper name.
I hesitate to predict the exact time it will be
finished, but as soon as I send the software to the publisher,
you'll be the first to know.
Michigan has been working for some years on what promises to be a most
useful Nabokov reference tool--a catalogue of all characters (and names)
mentioned in VN's work. The work, long delayed by technical problems, is
now approaching completion. It will be published by Ardis. Its appearance
will be announced on NABOKV-L. Christine Rydel's description and account
follows.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A NABOKOV WHO'S WHO: A GUIDE TO PROPER NAMES has
expanded and may even have a new title when Ellendea Proffer
puts it back in the Ardis catalogue. The book currently has
approximately 30,000 entries and is on computer diskettes at
my university's computer center, where someone is
reformatting the data so that I can do a page check for
accuracy and edit the entries after final alphabetization.
The book not only describes characters who have names,
but also locates ANY name--even those of real-life
characters like Napoleon or Chateaubriand or Lawrence Sterne
or Annabelle Lee. It also contains a section devoted to
places, establishments (stores, restaurants, etc.) with
names, works of art (real and fictional), music, works of
literature (real and fictional), and titles of books, poems,
stories, essays, etc. (real and fictional). In addition ALL
characters, named or unnamed, are located. So if someone
wants to find all references to "nurses," they will be
noted, with subsections like: Nurses, Male; Nurses, Female;
Nurses, Fat; Nurses, Helpful, etc. Also main characters will
also be listed (with page references) with all of their
names and the pages where these various names occur. The
pages are keyed to the first editions. If I changed
pagination now to the latest editions, I would NEVER finish
this project. I wanted this book to be as useful as I could
make it. I guess that, in effect, the book will be a
specialized concordance to ALL characters and everything
that has a title or a proper name.
I hesitate to predict the exact time it will be
finished, but as soon as I send the software to the publisher,
you'll be the first to know.