Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977
Page 56
1. Of The Library of Congress.
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1. The three Nabokovs accepted an invitation to attend the Lolita premiere in New York on 3 June 1962.
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2. Articles in European newspapers about Lolita.
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1. New Yarl( Times Book Review (24 December 1961).
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2. A History of Cornell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962).
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3. Victor Reynolds, director of Cornell University Press.
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4. Cornell colleague.
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1. Associate publisher and editorial director of Playboy.
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2. Spectorsky had invited VN to "undertake a study of Brigitte Bardot."
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1. Published 30 May 1962.
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1. Editor of Encounter.
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2. Macdonald had written to Encounter (September 1962) attacking VN's "Pushkin and Gannibal" (July 1962) and asking if the magazine would have published it if the author had been "an unknown graduate student."
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3. Published in the September 1962 issue of Encounter.
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1. James Mason, Sue Lyon, Peter Sellers, and Shelley Winters.
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2. "A Bolt from the Blue," New Republic (4 June 1962).
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3. Butterfly drawing beneath signature.
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1. Of Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
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1. Juliet Dymoke, Bend Sinister (Jarrolds)—an historical novel that used VN title, apparently innocently.
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1. Of the Bollingen Foundation
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2. Princeton: Bollingen, 1964.
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3. Bart Winer, Bollingen editor.
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4. Montreux stationery store with copying service.
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1. Novelist Evan S. Connell, Jr.
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1. Founder of Penguin Books.
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1. Of Penguin Books.
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2. By DN; it was used for the 1963 Penguin paperback.
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1. New York: Pantheon, 1949.
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1. The Houghton Library, Harvard University.
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2. Bart Winer.
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3. Recipient of the Bollingen Prize for poetry translation in 1963.
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1. On Translation, ed. Reuben Brower.
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1. Of The New Post. Levin had called VN's attention to an article by Peter Welding claiming that Lolita was based on the abduction of eleven-year-old Sally Ann Horner by Frank LaSalle.
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1. James Joyce scholar.
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1. Literary critic.
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2. "Nabokov's Gift" (14 October 1963); review of The Gift.
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1. Dobell, an Esquire editor, had invited VN to take over the magazine's book-review column.
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1. Of the London publication Time and Tide; he had asked VN how he wrote, when he wrote, where he wrote, and how he found inspiration.
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1. VN had given readings at Harvard, where he was introduced by Prof. Harry Levin. DN and a fellow-student had climbed Memorial Hall at Harvard while his father was a visiting lecturer, but not during VN's lecture. DN.
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2. Translated from Russian by DN.
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1. VN's response published with Walter Arndt, "A Reply to Vladimir Nabokov: Goading the Pony" (30 April 1964).
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1. The Belgian wife of Nabokov's brother Kirill. The latter had lived in Brussels and died of a heart attack while employed by Radio Liberty in Munich on 16 April 1964. His widow, whom VN knew only very slightly, was to perish not long afterwards in a Brussels department-store fire set by an arsonist. DN.
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2. Nabokov was in the U.S. at the time of his brother's death, and was prevented by speaking engagements from returning in time for the funeral. This letter was written shortly after his arrival in Montreux.
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3. Translated from French by DN.
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1. Ernest J. Simmons, Pushkin (1937).
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2. Harrison Salisbury of the New Ybr)( Times.
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3. John Barkham of Saturday Review.
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4. London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1964.
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1. Vladislav Hodasevich and M. L. Gofman.
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2. The Nabokov-Wilson Letters 940–97, ed. Simon Karlinsky (1979).
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1. Editor at The New Yorker.
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2. "Grandmother Nabokov" (26 September 1964).
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1. Free-lance interviewer for Life.
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2. "The Master of Versatility—Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita, Languages, Lepidoptera," Life (20 November 1964).
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3. Photographer.
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4. Magazine published by Ralph Ginzburg.
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1. In 1962 VN and Weidenfeld began discussing the possibility of a complete and fully illustrated catalogue of European butterflies, including photographs of all species and major subspecies. Unfortunately Weidenfeld saw fit to abandon the project. DN.
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1. Published by permission of Pat Hitchcock O'Connell.
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1. Hitchcock answered on 3 December that "My needs are immediate and urgent."
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2. Hitchcock replied that this idea was not in his genre.
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3. Hitchcock responded that this idea had been used for The Iron Curtain (1948).
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1. Walters, of the New York Times Book Review, had asked VN for a 150-word statement on what paperbacks had done for him. VN's reply was published on p. 4 of the 10 January 1965 issue with responses from other authors.
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1. Published 22 January 1965, p. 112.
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2. "Deutsch and Nabokov," letter to the New Statesman from M. M. Carlin expressing preference for Babette Deutsch's translation of Eugene Onegin.
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1. William H. Howe, Our Butterflies and Moths: A True-to-Life Adventure into the Wonderland of the Butterfly World and its Related Insect Kingdom as Seen Through Fact and Fancy, Fable and Folklor
e. North Kansas City, Mo.: True Color Publishing, 1963.
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2. W. J. Holland, The Butterfly Book. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1931.
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1. Of the Russian Research Center, Harvard University.
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1. Esquire did not publish this letter.
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1. Published in the 23 April 1965 issue of New Statesman.
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1. Published as "Despair"; December 1965, January-February 1966.
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* After giving a little more thought to the matter, my husband suggests a switch to "A Beastly Mess". This would fit into the passage at the end where the narrator hits upon the right title.
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1. Wilson's "The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov," New York Review of Books (15 July). VN's letter was printed in the 26 August 1965 issue of the New york Review of Books. Wilson attacked VN's translation of Eugene Onegin as awkward; he protested the use of rare words as well as VN's "errors" in Russian and English.
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2. The last sentence is in holograph.
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1. Published as "The Strange Case of Nabokov and Wilson" with a reply from Wilson on 26 August 1965.
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1. Osip Mandelshtam, Collected Worlds, ed. Struve and B. A. Filipoff (Washington: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1964–1966).
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2. Struve had written VN on 22 September 1965 warning him that "a certain Andrew Field, has embarked on a book about you (and a 'definitive' one at that). I want to caution you: this Field is a total ignoramus when it comes to Russian."
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3. Andrew Field, Nabokpv: His Life in Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).
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4. Translated from Russian by Véra Nabokov and DN.
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1. The President had undergone surgery.
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1. Artist whose work often appeared in The New Yorker.
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2. Steinberg had sent a copy of his book The New World (New York: Harpers, 1965) to VN.
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1. Of National Educational Television.
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2. Excerpts from this television interview were published in The New York( Times on 30 January 1966 as "Why Nabokov Detests Freud."
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1. After the New York Review of Booi(s held VN's article without scheduling publication, VN withdrew and published it in Encounter (February 1966).
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1. Published 20 January 1966, p. 30.
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2. 11 November 1965, p. 38.
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1. Subsidiary rights director, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
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2. This design, by DN, was used for the Panther paperback.
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1. Not published.
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1. Encounter had sent VN a copy of Robert Lowell's letter; neither letter was published.
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1. Not published by Encounter.
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1. Librarian of Congress.
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1. Encounter (May 1966); published with Robert Lowell's letter claiming that "both commonsense and intuition tell us that Edmund Wilson must be nine-tenths unanswerable and right in his criticism of Nabokov."
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1. VN withdrew this article on 10 March, explaining to Lasky that he preferred to publish it in New York for "legal reasons." After the article was declined by the New Yar^ Review of Boo^s on advice of counsel, VN resubmitted it to Encounter-, but Lasky also declined it on advice of counsel. It was published as "'Lolita' and Mr. Girodias" in Evergreen Review (February 1976).
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1. "Language Levels," Encounter (May 1966).
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1. Department of Slavic Languages, Indiana University.
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2. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968.
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3. Last sentence added in Russian holograph.
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1. D. J. Enright, "Nabokov's Way," New York Review of Books (3 November 1966). This review of The Waltz Invention, The Eye, Despair, Speak, Memory, and Page Stegner's Escape into Aesthetics discusses VN's alleged inhumanity and absence of moral substance.
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1. Member of the English Department at Ohio State University.
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2. Escape into Aesthetics (New York: Dial Press, 1966).
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3. Diana Butler, "Lolita Lepidoptera," New World Writing (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1960).
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1. Added in holograph. The anthology was published as Nabokov's Congeries and as The Portable Nabokov (New York: Viking, 1968).
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1. Associate Editor at Vogue.
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2. This issue published an interview with VN by Penelope Gilliatt.
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1. Published 1 January 1967.
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1. Of the London Sunday Times.
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1. Publisher of Playboy.
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1. The editors of Playboy had awarded the $1,000 Best Fiction Award for 1966 to Despair. The second paragraph of this letter was published in Playboy's May issue.
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1. February 1967, p. 91.
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2. Sigmund Freud and W. C. Bullitt, "Woodrow Wilson," Encounter (January and February 1967).
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1. Translated by Bishop (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966).
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2. Sentence added in holograph; a jocular reference to a butterfly drawn by VN in a bathroom in Bishop's home. DN.
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3. With butterfly drawing.
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1. Father of Page Stegner; novelist and professor of English at Stanford University; author of Wolf Willow (New York: Viking, 1962). Wallace Stegner and VN had met at a writers' conference at the University of Utah in July 1949.
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1. Editor of weekend edition of the London Telegraph.
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1. Published in the 25 March 1967 issue.
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1. A member of the Stanford University English Department (and a former student of VN's at Cornell), Appel was compiling The Annotated Lolita (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970).
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2. Havelock Ellis, English literary critic; author of Studies in the Psychology of Sex.
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3. Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses.
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1. Random House did not publish this paperback edition of Eugene Onegin.
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2. Ada.
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1. Nabokov: The Man and His Work, ed. L.S. Dembo (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967).
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1. Playboy fiction editor.
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1. Character in the comic strip Buz Sau/yer-, she suffered from amnesia.
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1. Published 17 November 1967.
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2. V. S. Pritchett, "The Trapped Bear."
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1. Elena Sikorski spent a week in November-December of 1967 at the Montreux Palace when Véra Nabokov had to fly to New York to arrange for an ailing cousin to move to Switzerland. This parodie rulebook reflects a very special intellectual and ludic camaraderie that had existed between Nabokov and his sister from an early age (misinterpreters of Ada beware). DN.
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2. A tonic syrup.
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* What? All right, I'll ask. (Eng.).
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*** only in case liquor or some such thing is needed. Or if they forget to deliver something from the dairy. Tel. numbers are by T[elephone] in rm. 64.
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* otherwise Mme. F. will be unable to penetrate from kitchen to servants' toilet, if she has to go.
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**** with loud footfalls (we are not alone in the hotel).
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** Mme. F. will make all purchases herself (i.e., no sudden "zhashet muamems" ["j'achète moi-même" -"I'll buy it myself'] etc.) and will cook twice a day.
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3. A reference to the impressions brought back from India by Elena Sikorski's son Vladimir, who had been there in his professional capacity of simultaneous interpreter. DN.
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4. Translated from Russian by DN.
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1. Translated from Russian by DN.
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1. Published as Glory (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971).
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2. Tide of the chapter on The Inspector General in VN's Nikolay Gogol.
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1. Joint managing editor, Panther Books, London.
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2. The Eye.
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1. Published 19 January 1968.
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1. McGraw-Hill editor.
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2. King, Queen, Knave, trans. VN and DN (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968).
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1. President, McGraw-Hill.
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2. The 1928 Russian text of King, Queen, Knave was republished by McGraw-Hill in 1969.
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1. VN's agent Irving Lazar had told Booher about Ada.
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1. Interviewer for the New Times Boo/( Review, the interview appeared on 12 May 1968. See Strong Opinions, p. 108.
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