Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0006302, Tue, 8 Jan 2002 14:50:40 -0800

Subject
Query: Nabokov and "Dear John" letters
Date
Body
----Original Message-----
From: Anna Holmes [mailto:annaholmes@earthlink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2002 9:45 PM

I am a writer in New York and am contacting you in regards to the works of
Nabokov.

I am currently working on a book for publisher Carroll & Graf, an anthology
of letters of the "Dear John" variety. By "Dear John" I mean correspondence
in which a woman is ending a romance or commenting/venting/mourning/
explaining an already-ended romance.

In addition to the actual letters of women, both contemporary and
historical, I am also including fictional letters that appeared in both
epistolary novels and works of "regular" narrative fiction.

To that end, I wonder if you know of any fictional "Dear John" letters that
appeared in Nabokov's work? It's been a long time since I read his work and
I don't recall specific examples. I also don't have time to re-read
everything, as the amount of research I have to do is massive and the amount
of time before my first draft of the book is due is limited. So I thought
that querying a Nabokov expert might be a way to discover such letters...

Any help or advice you can give on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks very much for your time, and Happy New Year.

Sincerely,

Anna Holmes
annaholmes@earthlink.nety