Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father) learns about Marina’s affair with Baron d’Onsky from a Bohemian lady:

Describing his dinner with Ada and her family in Bellevue Hotel in Mont Roux, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the two agents of Lemorio (the flamboyant comedian) and their adopted child, a lovely Eurasian lad, who had recently been slain in a night-club fracas:

Describing the first time when Ada had glimpsed him, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Bagrov’s grandson, a nice quiet little fellow who quietly massacred moles and anything else with fur on:

Describing Victor Vitry’s film version of his novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the lovely leading lady, Norwegian-born Gedda Vitry (the director’s wife who played Theresa, a character in Van’s novel), and compares Theresa to some lewd elf:

Describing Victor Vitry’s film version of his novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Olympic Games held in Berlin and the final football match in which the Americans beat the Germans by three goals to one:

Describing his father’s death in a mysterious airplane disaster, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions two scholars who had mysteriously vanished (perhaps dying under false names in the never-explained accident above the smiling ocean) at the ‘eleventh hour:’

When Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) meets Greg Erminin in Paris (also known as Lute on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set), Greg asks Van if Ada married Christopher Vinelander or his brother:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (the narrator and main character) describes the floramors (one hundred palatial brothels built by David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, all over the world in memory of his grandson Eric, the author of an essay entitled "Villa Venus: an Organized Dream"):

At the beginning of Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a singing cicada:

There was a time in my demented youth

When somehow I suspected that the truth

About survival after death was known -

To every human being: I alone

Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy

Describing the Zemblan Revolution, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) compares the King to the only black piece in what a composer of chess problems might term a king-in-the-corner waiter of the solus rex type: