Thanks a lot for all of you who replied to my letter; it was so pleasant to get such a response. The list said their decisive and irrevocable “may be”*.

But still I’m in trouble. According to Ms. Kunin’s observation pensive, Ada can be an allusion (parody, intertext, reference, think-of-a-term) to Addams or vice versa (if not the time-shift typical to “other” worlds). And there is no way out of this subjunctive trap. The thing is that the book is full of the same kind of possible threads that lead to nowhere. They can be “delightfully ridiculous” or absolutely definite and proven by VN himself. But does a reader get a deeper understanding of the book finding such minor details? Is it a right way to take in an academic research? “Guides to Whatever”, do they really help? What are the conclusions? The inevitable “so what”?

The idea about Addams family was produced at night, in love ardor, in my own mind ® and was generated by the following premises: reading Mr. Wood’s book and hard attempts to find the passages he refers to in the text of Ada**, the successive re-reading of this exquisite novel, and recent broadcast of The Addams Family new series based on the movie, based on the old series (VN was always very realistic in his prose) ***.

May be there is sense in concentrating over the brain-work and cognitive patterns that help us to create the world of VN’s novels. To think about the level of understanding and not just making sense. Speaking widely, are there intensive, not extensive ways of literary research? If one asked me such a question, I would be at a loss… Do the scholars have an answer?

*A good name for a female-personage.

**This is about the importance of putting the reference page numbers after the quote in good academic research. VN was always careful about it even in invented books.

*** CTC channel, Russia.

Sincerely,

Raya Seem.,St. Petersburg.

------------------------------------------------

EDNOTE. One can read a novel anyway one likes. There is no formula and the answer for the individual depends mostly on his/her particular interest and the nature of the particular book. My own approach to VN (following sheer delight) is, in your terms, intensive. I am not interested in the social impact of, say, LOLITA.  Many critics are interested in VN's moral attitude to the novel's events. I am not. I am strongly interested in those allusions that  may seem to lead nowhere. In fact they almost always do bear on  the novel's themes -- if you get to the bottom layer.  You can, of course, read the books without getting into these details but, once seen, they add greatly to the work as a whole. And they are fun--which is why I read novels (and lots of non-fiction). Let me hasten to add, NABOKV-L runs  material showing a great variety of approaches and welcomes them all.