Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0012664, Thu, 27 Apr 2006 21:37:51 -0400

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Re: Dan Brown's _The Da Vinci Code_ & VN? ...
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[EDNOTE. I hasten to supply another VN connection to the first message
in this post -- is that "literally scoured," by any chance? -- but again
urge everyone to keep VN in mind. -- SES]

Fascinating, the energy Dan Brown seems to have put into writing badly.
Why do the gravity boots go unmentioned in his acknowledgements for his
book? There he simply admits that he scoured a ton of other books,
including the one by the two Brits who sued him.
Andrew Brown

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Dear Eds and List,

When I began to read Sandy Klein s posting with information about Dan
Brown s anti-gravity shoes( ' when stuck on points of the plot, Brown
would dangle upside down from a pair of "gravity boots" to think it
out')
I thought, at first, that he had chosen the article as a reference to
Van's "maniambulation", an inverted vision of the world sometimes
described as "demoniacal."
Then, perusing the article a bit further, I found a reference to VN's
writing habits (" wrote on index cards, partly because he did not write
consecutively from the beginning to the end of a chapter. He then
arranged them in order and gave them to his wife to type up."). But I
could not exclude the association bt. Dan Brown and Van's
efforts because I'd just happened to read a preface written by
G.K.Chesterton for his essay on "Orthodoxy" :
"Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation
is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being
born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for
his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain is in
the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth.
The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very
weak pedestal to stand on."
Fortunately Van's talents helped him to keep his head off the ground
just as, apparently Dan Brown's by the artifice of his "anti-gravity
boots", whatever these should be!.
( Of course, I don t share G.K.Chesterton s views about "modern man".)

Jansy Mello

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