Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0006952, Tue, 22 Oct 2002 18:57:42 -0700

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Fw: "REALITY" -- Nabokov or Campbell?
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"REALITY" -- Nabokov or Campbell?
----- Original Message -----
From: Rodney Welch
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 5:56 PM
Subject: "REALITY" -- Nabokov or Campbell?

Glad you brought up this quote, because I've always wondered who said it first.

Some years ago, I encountered a similar aphorism attributed to Joseph Campbell, the follow-your-bliss myth scholar who enjoyed a spate of posthumous popularity in the late 1980s.

A web search turns up the following: "There is no way you can use the word "reality" without quotation marks around it." < Joseph Campbell. (I found it at the following site: http://www.righteouswarriortemple.org/real.htm)

No idea when he said it, what context or what year -- but please dear God someone relieve my mind that Campbell stole it from VN, and not the other way around.

Rodney Welch
Columbia, SC
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EDNOTE. VN dared his LOLITA Afterword as Nov 12, 1956. Campbell's _Hero with a Thousand Faces_ was 1948 but I don't if his reality quote was in it. I can't image VN quoting Campbell.
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