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Fw: Nabokov echoes?
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 16:25:32 -0300
<NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Dear Don and List,
Following the theme of "Nabokov´s echoes", I recently came across a very trivial
sentence in Ada, which made me think of a more recent novel´s title. I wonder if
its author, Kazuo Ishiguro, was inspired by Nabokov´s
"Ada" in any way and this very routine sentence remained in his memory? It
could simple be a coincidence, but I thought of bringing it up anyway, since
our themes have been dealing with "memory".
Jansy
In ADA, chapter 38 (1969)
"Puffing, he drew the curtains, for nothing but picturesque ruins remained of
the day. Jones was new, very efficient, solemn and slow, and one had to get
used gradually to his ways and wheeze. Years later he rendered me a service
that I will never forget".
( obs: Jones substituted another butler, named Price and later he became a
policeman in Lower Ladore. Through him Van will discover the address of the
"eavesdropping" blackmailer photographer Kim Beauhearnais) .
The Remains of the Day (1989), Kazuo Ishiguro
What history is to a nation, memory is to the individual. Both serve to locate
us, to tell us who we are by reminding us of what we have been and done. And
both, as Kazuo Ishiguro suggests, are open to selection, repression and
revision. The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro's third novel, examines the
intersections of individual memory and national history through the mind of
Stevens, a model English butler who believes that he has served humanity by
devoting his life to the service of a "great" man, Lord Darlington (...). (
data from the google,quoting Dr. Gregory O'Dea)
