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Update from Montreux
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Date
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----- Original Message -----
From: Dmitri Nabokov
To: 'D. Barton Johnson'
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 8:30 AM
I fully agree with Tom Bolt's illustration of pseudo-similarity and his appraisal of Bunin's stature. I remember Bunin as being very charming when I met him as a small child. He should indeed be translated. My only cavil with the admirable Tom is that the nameless protagonist of The Enchanter dies not in a colllision, to be exact, but beneath the wheels of a massive truck under which he has thrown himself.
At the cost of continuing to seem as "fussy" as VN, I would also like to add a comment to Peter Terzian's informative "Nymphet Notes" (in New York Newsday, May 30). If the reader to whom he recommends the generally fine Everyman's edition of Lolita is a first-timer, he should be made aware that, in its first run, this version omitted the hilarious "John Ray, Jr, Ph.D" foreword, apparently on the editorial assumption that John Ray was real but superfluous. As soon as the blunder was brought to his attention, the publisher honorably withdrew and replaced the faulty copies, but a few doubtless slipped through the net. My dear friend Martin Amis's introduction is, in any case, excellent. Incidentally, the humorless publishers of some of the awful editions of VN's Russian Lolita have plunged into print with John Ray omitted altogether, or replaced by one their "experts,"
For the record, Lila Azam Zanganeh's interview with me (in French) appears in the May issue of La Règle du jeu, a journal devoted to "literature, philosophy, politics, and the arts." The issue also contains a French translation of Lichberg's "Lolita," and a short but windy discussion of the confusion generated by Maar. A page of Izvestia for 22 April was devoted to my father. A fairly long interview with me (in French) is due in ten days in la Revue automobile suisse.
Warm greetings,
DN
----- Original Message -----
From: Dmitri Nabokov
To: 'D. Barton Johnson'
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 8:30 AM
I fully agree with Tom Bolt's illustration of pseudo-similarity and his appraisal of Bunin's stature. I remember Bunin as being very charming when I met him as a small child. He should indeed be translated. My only cavil with the admirable Tom is that the nameless protagonist of The Enchanter dies not in a colllision, to be exact, but beneath the wheels of a massive truck under which he has thrown himself.
At the cost of continuing to seem as "fussy" as VN, I would also like to add a comment to Peter Terzian's informative "Nymphet Notes" (in New York Newsday, May 30). If the reader to whom he recommends the generally fine Everyman's edition of Lolita is a first-timer, he should be made aware that, in its first run, this version omitted the hilarious "John Ray, Jr, Ph.D" foreword, apparently on the editorial assumption that John Ray was real but superfluous. As soon as the blunder was brought to his attention, the publisher honorably withdrew and replaced the faulty copies, but a few doubtless slipped through the net. My dear friend Martin Amis's introduction is, in any case, excellent. Incidentally, the humorless publishers of some of the awful editions of VN's Russian Lolita have plunged into print with John Ray omitted altogether, or replaced by one their "experts,"
For the record, Lila Azam Zanganeh's interview with me (in French) appears in the May issue of La Règle du jeu, a journal devoted to "literature, philosophy, politics, and the arts." The issue also contains a French translation of Lichberg's "Lolita," and a short but windy discussion of the confusion generated by Maar. A page of Izvestia for 22 April was devoted to my father. A fairly long interview with me (in French) is due in ten days in la Revue automobile suisse.
Warm greetings,
DN