Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0003058, Thu, 23 Apr 1998 16:37:32 -0700

Subject
VN's 99th (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITORIAL NOTE. Thomas Bolt <bolt@spacelab.net>, whose msesage follows,
is a winner of the Yale Yonger Poet's Award and, more recently, the
1001-line poem DARK ICE which brilliantly plays on VN's PALE FIRE. He is
currently completing a novel. His poem and aninterview are featured on the
VN Web Site ZEMBLA at
http: //www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/nsintro.htm
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Tom Bolt
bolt@spacelab.net


99 is an important birthday for VN:

think of Lolita's fascination with Humbert's odometer, or the missing
last line of John Shade's final poem.


In celebration, I propose a toast:

("I search, John, for the viscous and the sawdust")


to VN,

but also to the readers, writers, and critics--in whom his demanding,
rewarding, maddening, enlightening, limited, transcendent,
heartbreaking, hilarious words continue to exist.

Cheers--and may the readers ever enjoy him, the writers fail to avoid
him, and the critics never quite convincingly explain that throb, or
whatever it is, that makes Nabokov so thrillingly, exasperatingly,
unanswerably unique.