From the looks of things, I must have met Gene in 1995, at a typically over-endowed conference hotel in Washington, DC. I don't know when or where our first words of greeting were spoken, but I do know that among the earliest were some that immediately highlighted his wry, understated sense of humor:
News
A literary gift, like the gift of life, is given from above.
Gene Barabtarlo was a gentleman, a conscientious and highly learned
scholar, a great Nabokovian, an excellent linguist… and a friend. I
first met him in June 1992. I had invited him to the first Nice
The news of Gennady Aleksandrovich Barabtarlo’s passing should not have caught me off-guard, but I must confess to finding myself lost for words at a moment that I knew would be coming.
Nabokov scholar Gennady Alexandrovich (“Gene”) Barabtarlo died on February 24, aged 70.