EDNOTE. In reply to MM's query: In a July 1943 letter to Edmund Wilson from Utah VN writes: "I happened to read the other day a remarkably silly but rather charming book about a dentist who murdered his wife---written in the nineties and uncannily like a translation from Maupassant in style. It all ends in the Mohave Desert. The blurb says it is an "American classic" but I cannot believe it. Do you know it?" (p. 107 in the 1st edition of _The Nabokov-Wilson Letters 1940-1971_) Editor Simon Karlinsky notes that VN "must have had in mind _McTeague_ by Frank Norris (1899) which served as the basis for Erich von Stroheim's famous film _Greed_.

----- Original Message -----

From: Mulhern, Michael

To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'

Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 2:31 PM

Subject: RE: more teeth

Does anyone know what VN's take on McTeague was?

--m mulhern

-----Original Message-----
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@cox.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 11:22 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fw: more teeth

----- Original Message -----
From: Philip Maschke

To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum

Sent: Sunday, December 31, 1995 5:31 PM

Subject: more teeth

Dear Don and list,
One of the probably most prominent examples of teeth in literature is Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. Teeth play a central role and are one of the leitmotifs in the novel. There are other examples in the works of Mann
(I know that VN had a strong opinion on Mann and many Nabokovians therefor don't like him. But if you' d like to read something differnt from Mann (except for Buddenbrooks, Der Tod in Venedig, Der Zauberberg) maybe you should try Der Erwählte ( The Chosen One ?). Ada Enthusiasts should find here once again the topic of incest in German literature.)
Another text that comes to mind speaking of teeth is Flann O'Brien The third policeman, which has a nice strange discussion about teeth and health (probably a commonplace topic at that time).
philip
"D. Barton Johnson" schrieb:
EDNOTE. Prof. Goldschweer has put me to shame. My claim to be the progenitor of a new critical genre was mistaken--as documented below. Worse yet, Ziolkowski's volume with its seminal essay "The Telltale Teeth: Psychodontia to Sociodontia" is on my shelf and I must have read it. He adds many names to the (transcen-)dental canon. Among them a couple of novels I have recently read---but obviously with insufficient attention to the dental theme: Frank Norris's 1899 _McTeague_ and Georges Bernanos' _Diairy of Country Priest -(circa 1930?). Alert reader Basil Lawrence calls attention William Goldman's _Marathon Man_.
----- Original Message -----

From: Ulrike.Goldschweer@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
<?color><?param 0100,0100,0100>Dear List,
There is an article on that subject in <?/color>Theodore <?color><?param 0100,0100,0100>Ziolkowski's Varieties of Literary Thematics (Princeton 1983), including Guenther Grass (I think), but not Nabokov (if my memory doesn't deceive me).
Kind regards
Ulrike Goldschweer, Bochum (Germany)