----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 9:21
AM
Subject: Fw: Ada/or PF: VN -- the teacher
& VN --the writer
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 5:24 AM
Subject: Re: Ada/or PF
I also wonder what effect those
years of teaching had on VN's work. Did he make his novels into difficult
textbooks,academic exercises to stump readers, to test their knowledge
of literary history? I mean, "Program! Program! Get your Pale Fire Program!
You can't read Pale Fire without a Program!"
Phil I
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EDNOTE. I think there can be no doubt that items
VN gleaned from his class-related reading things that got worked
into his novels. I know that even in my academic writing whatever
incidental reading I'm doing at the time sneaks in. There is now in progress a
Nabokov's Reading List project that wll gradually accumulate a bibliography of
books VN is known to have read and the date of reading. It will be
entertaining and instructive to search out related allusions in VN's
writings. It will also help establish or reject tentative
allusions.