It's all in the archives and Wikipedia.  Michael Donohue pointed out that the game when Ben Chapman homered against the Yankees was unlikely to have inspired such a headline.

https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0410&L=NABOKV-L&P=R43338&I=-3

At the Wikipedia article on Pale Fire, a footnote mentions that there was a game between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Yankees that the A's won 5-4 on a homer by Sam Chapman, not Ben.

I agree with Carolyn that in addition to the very plausible idea that Nabokov saw a "Chapman's homer" headline thumbtacked to someone's door, he could have made up the whole thing.

By the way, Ben Chapman seems to have combined "the jasmine-belt lyncher and the mystical anti-Semite".  Well, maybe not literally a lyncher and not mystical, but....

Jerry Friedman


On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 8:10 AM, Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@utk.edu> wrote:
Greetings, NabLers: I might as well confess that I have these past 10 days quietly resumed my duties at the helm, while SES takes a well-earned break from our weighty responsibility to you. 

Re: Carolyn's question below, I think the answer is in the poem: Nabokov must have seen the headline tacked to some English professor's door at Wellesley or Cornell.  For a similar collection of "real-life puns," see the U. of Chicago Philosophy Department's web site, which I happened upon just yesterday.  They have a dozen or more photographs of random signs that unwittingly (or sometimes wittingly) evoke great philosophical debates.

~SB

From:
Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@att.net>
Date:
7/9/2013 1:33 PM
To:
Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>

Dear Sandy,

What a great find - well, it's news to me anyway. Had no idea there really was a Chapman in baseball. Of course I was a Dodger girl and it all happened years before I was born. Can we be sure that VN was aware that his joke had reality to back it up? Was he even in the US in '38? I could look it up, but I should have been out the door hours ago.

best wishes from
Carolyn



Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive

All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.