Dear NABOKV_L

Regarding the item Sarah Funke supplied, please post the following:

If the citation is correct Mr. Evans is a vulgarian and a fool. In the first place, my father did not “peddle” his books or anything else except his bicycle, which he did pedal. In the second, it does not take much grey matter to realize that rushing through Ada at breakneck speed once, twice, or many times is not the way to make sense of it.

Dmitri

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ORIGINAL SARAH FUNKE POSTING

ORIGINAL EDNOTE. NABOKV-L thanks Sarah Funke who is, among much else, the
compiler/editior of the elegant book catalogue "Vera's Butterflies" put out
by the book dealer Glen Horowitz in New York.
I am a bit leery of the story here since VN's cinematic dealings were
handled by the mega-agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar. Also, Evans must have been
a speed reader if he got thru ADA twice in one night.

----- Original Message -----
From: <SarahFunke@aol.com>

l am told that in his memoir _The Kid Stays in the Picture_, movie producer Robert Evans includes
A lengthy anecdote "about a meeting with Nabokov, who was peddling the manuscript of Ada to Hollywood for a film adaptation. Evans read the manuscript twice through, during the night before his meeting, and he couldn't make any sense of it, so he passed on the project. He also talkS about Laughter in the Dark as one of his favorite novels of all time..."

Best,

Sarah Funke