Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0001226, Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:40:30 -0700

Subject
Footnotes
Date
Body
EDITORIAL NOTE. Alphonse Vinh's recent query re VN and footnotes stemmed
in part form an article in the NYTimes by Willian Honan. (AUg. 14 p. 9)
I pass on a couple of short quotes from the article. The second one
sounds not at all unlike some of VN's note in his EUGENE ONEGIN commentaries.

"In a celebrated spoof of scholarly writing a generation ago, the
humorist Frank Sullivan quipped, ''Give a footnote an inch, and it'll
take a foot.'' Academicians were not amused....
The longest footnote Professor Grafton said he found appeared in a
book called ''The History of Northumberland'' by John Hodgson published
in 1840. It ran for 165 pages."