Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0006402, Fri, 22 Feb 2002 15:33:10 -0800

Subject
Nabokov(?) and Woody Allen
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. Oleg Dorman, Moscow film maker and ardent Nabokovian, is
seeking some help in polishing his Woody Allen story translations.
Perhaps some Nabokovian would enjoy lending their cultural background,
etc. As an added thought, I wonder if VN ever commented on WA? Also, I
strongly suspect Allen must have been a close reader of VN. Literary
references only, please.
---------------------------------------
From Oleg Dorman <dorman@land.ru>

One far away day in early 80s in a second-hand bookshop I came across a
paperback by Woody Allen. Wanting to share with my friends this kind
of prose and humour - absolutely new to us at those dusty times - I
manufactured some translations.

Let me omit decades (blackout, as they say in cinema): they are now
going to
publish the first book of Allen's prose here in Russia, and I am
revising my
work.

I am looking for somebody to advise me on what I'd call Americana, New
Yorkiana. Though some of my translations from WA have recently been
published in the journal Inostrannaya Literature and got an undeservedly
warm
reception, I still feel uneasy and suspect missed implications,
undeciphered
irony, and word games in every Allen's sentence.

IF YOU PLEASE, - may be you can get me in electronic touch with some
kind and patient person?

On my behalf, I'd be glad to help some equally poor New Yorker in
translating
Pushkin, Nabokov or Tolstoy.

Oleg Dorman.