Alexey Sklyarenko: In Transparent Things, Hugh Person's father dies of apoplexy as he tries on trousers in a garment store. When it happens, Hugh is in a nearby souvenir shop where there is a snapshot-taking machine. The cabin's brown curtain was only half drawn, disclosing the elegant legs, clad in transparent black, of a female seated inside. (chapter 5)I'm not sure if there is a connection, but in "People, Years, Life" (Book Six, 9) Ehrenburg describes how he was photographed by a reporter when trying on trousers in a New York shop:...The photograph appeared in a newspaper. When Ehrenburg asked its editor why did he publish it, the editor replied "because the person was interesting for us." "But why the person's lower part?"

JM: Connections, coincidences, curios: In a review I read today various authors are cited in relation to Dean Koontz, but the TLS critic forgets to mention either Vladimir Nabokov (through Frost) or, at least, sportsman Evgeni Nabokov (because of a pair of "Red Wings")*.  
Let's follow the events:
 
From Pale Fire:                                 A curio: Red Sox Beat Yanks 5-4
                                                         On Chapman’s Homer,
thumbtacked to the door.

From the internet (sports)                Red Wings who know Evgeni Nabokov would welcome goalie as new teammate.
Published: Friday, January 21, 2011.
Shades of Frost:
A Hidden Source for Nabokov's Pale Fire

by Abraham Socher            

                                                    "In his commentary, Kinbote adduces Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" when the comparison between Shade and Frost comes up, and describes it as 'a poem that every American boy knows by heart.'."

Shades of Nabokov(s):
The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz
                                              Epigraph: The woods are lovely, dark and deep. --Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
                                              The Darkest Evening of the Year is a novel by the author Dean Koontz, released on November 27, 2007. The title is a possible allusion to Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"(wiki). In the story, Amy Redwing and her boydfriend Brian...
 
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*- In honor of Trixie, ... Mr. Koontz ...strains hard this time to place a pet at the center of his moral universe... The story’s human angel is Amy Redwing...Meanwhile, in sex-and materialism-soaked hell, the book’s two villains live lives that are warped reflections of Amy’s and Brian’s. They are called Harrow and Moongirl...He also shoehorns an assassin nicknamed Bookworm into “The Darkest Evening of the Year”...Go figure: This character’s real name is Philip Marlowe, but he has rejected it for such Vonnegut-inspired aliases as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater, not to mention one from Thomas Pynchon. When he grows more deranged, he rants about Kafka, Wallace Stevens and James Joyce...If the book’s finale features creepily gleaming surgical instruments, it also involves “pearly fog” and a “white gate.” You’ve been reading too many sinners if you don’t spot the pearly gates in that. (Books of The Times: "Not Just Man’s Best Friend but God’s Best Ally " by Janet Maslin,Nov.22, 2007)
In "...this topnotch thriller from bestseller Koontz...Amy Redwing, the survivor of a horrifying marriage...This is the perfect book for thriller addicts who know the darkest hour is just before dawn and for canine lovers who remember dog spelled backwards is god." ( Publisher's Weekly,Nov. 27) --- "Trixie Koontz has left this earthly plane, but she can still be found on the Internet...She tells him that she is in a better place. He wonders whether she was looking over his shoulder as he wrote his latest novel..."

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