Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0020855, Sun, 10 Oct 2010 14:25:36 +0100

Subject
Re: [NABOKOV-L] A recurrent typo or a pun?
From
Date
Body
Jansy: my Everyman¹s Pale Fire (1992, ll 376-7, page 46) has ³English Lit²,
the common abbreviation for ³Literature,² although picky Chicago-Stylish
copy editors would insist on adding a period/fullstop: ³Lit.²! Just as we
see ³English² shortened to ³Eng.². The convention is a useful disambiguator,
since ³Lit by candle² is not the same as ³Lit. by candle.² Indeed, you can
read

In English Lit to be a document (line 367)

with this in mind (it¹s a free country, Reading)

BUT we can¹t rush to judge the ³Litt² you report as, perforce, a typo. IF VN
wrote ³Litt² then my Everyman¹s ³Lit² has the typo. And, such are the quirks
of the Lit. Crit. [sic] Game, that I can offer a perfectly plausible
suggestion that VN¹s ³Litt² (if such he wrote) is a punning abbreviation for
³Litter² (as in ³Trash,² ³Rubbish.²)

The answer, of course, lies in VN¹s original m/s and the subsequent, final
draft approved by him. We know VN was a super-careful prof-redder!
There are, methinks, healthy morals from this affair. Writers can misspell
on purpose or accidentally. Editors can wrongly correct deliberate typos,
and overlook inadvertent slips. Eng. and other Lit.s will forever attract
disputatious, Kinbotean footnotes/glosses, a point often overlooked by Pale
Fire exegetes (excluding Jansy, bien entendu).

Stan Kelly-Bootle, MA, MAA, AMS, ASCAP, AAAS, ... (continued page 86)

On 09/10/2010 05:37, "Jansy" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:

> Lines 376-377: was said in English Litt to be
>
> Cf. "Pale Fire": Library of America Nabokov, p.578; Everyman's p.194.
>
>
> JM: Is there a typo in the double "tt" for "English Litt"? Or does it
> indicate a pun and, if so, what does it mean?


Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en

Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com

Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/








Attachment