----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 12:55 PM
Subject: Re: Casta Diva? ADA

ADA can indeed be discouraging in detail but  the general outlines are now reasonably clear thanks to a generation of scholarship.


Dear Ed.,

I don't think this is the case. For example no one has discussed the multiple murders that Marina and Ada have committed and what role they play in this so-called love story. And I am convinced that this is not a love story. Who is Ronald Oranger -- no one even seems to worry about this. How many manuscripts are referred to in the novel? The number of codes in this novel clearly exceed the one that is described in it. The chronology has never been tracked down, and there is an obviously scrambling of events and generations.  What is the L disaster? Who are all those people in the "family tree." And so on.

I guess I have to wait for the next generation of scholarship. This generation leaves me very  much less than satisfied.

Carolyn