Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0008868, Thu, 6 Nov 2003 10:25:57 -0800

Subject
QUERY: "a fake from beginning to end"
Date
Body
EDNOTE. Eric Naiman is the author of several insightful and extremely
entertaining articles on Nabokov's verbal dexterity.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Naiman" <naiman@socrates.berkeley.edu>
>
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> In his Gogol book VN writes: "I happen to have upon my desk a copy of a
> paper with a whle page advertising a certain novel, which novel is a fake
> from beginning to end" and he continues to quote from the blurbs praising
> the book.
> One of the lessons of the Gogol book is that writers create their own
> texts and don't respond to chance impressions -- this might be an imagined
> blurb, but I wonder if anyone has looked for the quoted blurbs and
> identified a precise target for VN's comments.