However, the journalist might have failed to consider that two of
the invented poet's names could have been
inspired by Nabokov's characters in Pale Fire, John FRANCIS Shade and
Charles XAVIER (Kinbote). There's Susan Hill's mad poet, Francis
Croft and Anthony Burgess's Francis Xavier Enderby - who
"likes to compose his poems on the lavatory and has his creator's lexical
relish.".
A.S.Byatt's poet Randolph H. Ash and another, created by James
Blaylock and Tim Powers, ie. William Ashbless, have names related to
"ashes" and they bring to my mind, although on a superficial
level, Nabokov's fascination with the Cinderella theme, with all the
columba or plumbeous shades of gray, and with Shade's auto de
fé that reduced to
ash part of his name.