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VN SIGHTING: Treuer PF
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FROM: Don Johnson
l have been doing a lot of desultory reading lately. By chance I ran across a novel, "The Translation of Dr Appeles," by David Treuer who teaches in the English Department at the U. of Minnesota. Its hero (like Treuer) is an Ojibwe with a PHD but (unlike Treuer) works in a NYC library archive and translates Indian legend manuscripts. The book interweaves the life of the translator and the 19th century Indian tale he is translating. All in all, a good literary novel playing with the metaphor of texts (and lives) interbreeding (and interbleeding).
Among the things that caught my eye was a passage describing a disjointed dream based presumably upon scenes from the books that pass through his hands. Among them, we find:
"To his left was a man throwing cabbages over a stone wall and to his right a bearded professor played table tennis in his basement with a pair of twins" (77)
Doctor Kinbote, I presume? I see from Treuer's University CV that he teaches a course called "The Layering of Modern Narrative, Looking for Treasure in Nabokov's Pale Fire."
P.S. But (rhetorically) who is that man throwing cabbages over the wall?
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l have been doing a lot of desultory reading lately. By chance I ran across a novel, "The Translation of Dr Appeles," by David Treuer who teaches in the English Department at the U. of Minnesota. Its hero (like Treuer) is an Ojibwe with a PHD but (unlike Treuer) works in a NYC library archive and translates Indian legend manuscripts. The book interweaves the life of the translator and the 19th century Indian tale he is translating. All in all, a good literary novel playing with the metaphor of texts (and lives) interbreeding (and interbleeding).
Among the things that caught my eye was a passage describing a disjointed dream based presumably upon scenes from the books that pass through his hands. Among them, we find:
"To his left was a man throwing cabbages over a stone wall and to his right a bearded professor played table tennis in his basement with a pair of twins" (77)
Doctor Kinbote, I presume? I see from Treuer's University CV that he teaches a course called "The Layering of Modern Narrative, Looking for Treasure in Nabokov's Pale Fire."
P.S. But (rhetorically) who is that man throwing cabbages over the wall?
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm