NABOKV-L discussion

I would like to announce that I have uploaded a paper to academia.edu: “Kinbote’s Hero’s Journey: Transcendent Path or Dead End?”

https://www.academia.edu/38426808/KINBOTE_S_HERO_S_JOURNEY-MaryRoss.docx

I would like to announce that I have uploaded a paper to academia.edu: “Kinbote’s Hero’s Journey: Transcendent Path or Dead End?”

https://www.academia.edu/38426808/KINBOTE_S_HERO_S_JOURNEY-MaryRoss.docx

CFP: Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita in the #MeToo Era (edited volume)

I have noticed a cluster of misprints in Pale Fire’s index. I don’t know if they are accidental or intentional, but since reading James Ramey’s astounding discoveries of purposeful punctuation anomalies in the index (Pale Fire’s Black Crown, Nabokov Online Journal, Vol. VI (2012) pp. 1-17) I have to wonder.

Under Shade, John Francis we find:

A recent article by Mary Ross in Nabokovian Notes features Pale Fire’s arcane landlord, Judge Goldsworth. The article suggests that the judge represents aspects of Saturn, both the planet and myth, adding that on the eve of John Shade’s 61st birthday “a bright ‘star’ would be rising in the east–Saturn returning to its celestial position of 61 years ago.” “As it happens” the author  says, “(the judge) has been away and is soon to return.”

In a letter of 23 February 1937 to Hugh Gordon Porteus, T. S. Eliot wrote: "Thank you for your letter of the 22nd. I am as a matter of fact engaged this evening, and I really don’t know that the prospect of failing to hear a Russian poet read English translations of his works depresses me very much."

You'll have guessed who that Russian poet was. Porteus's letter to Eliot had said:

Hello.

I think Van has a sexual encounter (or encounters) very much on his mind when he lists the “SAPSUCKER” (another sucker comes to mind) paperback titles - which all have a ‘woodPECKER’on the spine.

 BB suggests in his brief notes for this chapter that there is an “Itchen River” in Hampshire. However I am pretty sure that VN had in mind the town of HITCHIN in the county of HERTFORDSHIRE. Hitchin is just a few miles from LETCHWORTH, which is mentioned earlier in the same sentence. Hitchin and Letchworth are two adjacent stops on a railway line from King’s Cross, London to Cambridge, and no doubt VN used this line many times. Hitchin is a very old town (see Wikipedia entry) with wonderful old buildings. “CHIMNEY BREASTS AND HIPPED GABLES” are there in abundance!

Merry Christmas, Everyone

Here is a train of thought for under the tree:

Oscar Nattochdag = Chattanooga Cars

I'm not sure what to make of it in Pale Fire, except as autobiographical clue; Nabokov apparently loved trains. He always drew on on letters for young Dmitri and Dmitri left a bunch of model trains amongst his donation to Harvard.

Kinbote is very fond of Nattochdag, so maybe that is the link.

The extremely popular song, "Chattanooga Choo Choo" came out in 1941 with the Glenn Miller Orchestra: