Eric Hyman (citing Stephen Blackwell’s Topic #2 and #4) "Whether “Referential” can stand on its own without thinking of “Signs and Symbols” is a much trickier question...In my own specialty, for example, I am quite happy to apprehend and appreciate Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde without “Referential[ity]” to Boccaccio (although I have read the Boccaccio [in translation] as part of academic research).   But I can’t read or see a performance of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida without automatically referencing it to both Chaucer and Virgil.  Whether Moore is doing reconstruction or deconstruction—and I mean “construction” as the noun form of both “construct” and “construe”—is a topic well worth considering."

 

Jansy Mello: EH and SB raise excellent points that even non specialists can discuss, within certain limits. For example, when EH, expanding on the matter of investigating "if Referential' can stand on its own without thinking of 'Signs and Symbols'," observes that whenever "he sees a performance of Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," he "automatically references it to both Chaucer and Virgil.". It helped me to perceive that, in my eyes, the problem with Moore's story is that it forced me to think about Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols" - because of its open quotes, plotting and title -  without allowing me to "automatically reference" (something related to an artistic "essence" or "excellence") Nabokov's story, something that is expected to happen when a great artist inserts other great works into his own and adds to their repercussion and power of permanence and growth. 

 

Sandy Drescher:"... If these are two stories are about sons in mental hospitals, then Moore's adaptation/homage is interesting enough and done well enough.
But if the original is in fact about something else, a reader of Nabokov might find her effort odd and off-putting. I guess I did."

 

Anthony Stadlen ":Clearly the links between works, in effect whole passages, is meant to mirror the kooky mania of Nabokov's story, literally put the reader into the position of N's insane boy, with everything signs and symbols of something else beyond--The problem is that this element hasn't really been wired into her own story's themes.as it is in Nabokov, just hangs there a gimmicky byproduct, probably because she removed the subtly paranoid uncanny element of the original's ending, making her work a dull, if occasionally well written piece of this-is-the-way-we-live-now-realism--If one doesn't know Nabokov I suspect Moore's story's emotional situation--the boy in the mental hospital, the mother, the wayward boyfriend--will probably be more affecting, though the end just comes across as an unlikely ironic twist thrown in to score points off the boyfriend character and make the mother seem more putupon--The mother's little intuitive leap about who made the phone call is just miles away from the stakes of the creeping dread in Nabokov, and leaves slightly confused as to who exactly we should feel for in this story, and why--"

 

Piers Smith: ..."I'd only add that the piece was competently written, and that it offered a more comforting pop culture take on mental illness than VN's story offers."