Subject
Re: Potato Elf query (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Robert Cook <rcook@rhi.hi.is>
My copy of the new Knopf short stories also omits section 8 of "The Potato
Elf," and as section 7 ends in the middle of a page (243) this is clearly
not a printing aberration. I suppose that Professor Brown has checked the
various earlier publications of this story, as mentioned on p. 646,
although one would have expected Knopf to follow the version in "A Russian
Beauty," since VN tells us in his forward to that volume that all the
stories in that volume "are given here in a final English form." It will be
most interesting to see what Knopf, and perhaps eventually Dmitri, have to
say. In a sense, one could imagine the story ending with section 7 and its
quiet picture of Fred subsiding into a life of calm acceptance, with only
an occasional twinge of nostalgia for lost love. But then the reference, on
p. 242, to "the first attack of angina pectoris" would lose its force as an
anticipation of the heart attack in section 8.
Robert Cook
University of Iceland
My copy of the new Knopf short stories also omits section 8 of "The Potato
Elf," and as section 7 ends in the middle of a page (243) this is clearly
not a printing aberration. I suppose that Professor Brown has checked the
various earlier publications of this story, as mentioned on p. 646,
although one would have expected Knopf to follow the version in "A Russian
Beauty," since VN tells us in his forward to that volume that all the
stories in that volume "are given here in a final English form." It will be
most interesting to see what Knopf, and perhaps eventually Dmitri, have to
say. In a sense, one could imagine the story ending with section 7 and its
quiet picture of Fred subsiding into a life of calm acceptance, with only
an occasional twinge of nostalgia for lost love. But then the reference, on
p. 242, to "the first attack of angina pectoris" would lose its force as an
anticipation of the heart attack in section 8.
Robert Cook
University of Iceland