Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0005163, Wed, 7 Jun 2000 23:12:25 -0700

Subject
Inventions (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Camille Scaysbrook <verona_beach@hotpop.com>

I love that :). I have noticed that now, when I am writing perfectly
ordinary letters to people, I struggle to supress these little fellers but I
now sometimes feel I cannot express myself adequately without them.

Over at the J.D. Salinger mailing list (of which I was once a member) we too
speculated that he was the originator of emoticons, in his book `Seymour: An
Introduction':

`May I present you, the reader, with this late-blooming bouquet of
parentheses: ((((((()))))))'

Here comes another one - ;)

Camille Scaysbrook


> From: Kiran Krishna <kiran@Physics.usyd.edu.au>
>
> Was Nabokov the first to come up with the oft-used symbol for the smile?
>
> Interview with Alden Whitman, The New York Times, April, 1969
>
> Q: How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate
> past?
>
> A: I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a
> smile - some sort of a concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would
> now like to trace in reply to your question.
>
> Amusing.
> yours
> Kiran
>