-----Original Message-----
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@cox.net]
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 11:22 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Fw: Casta Diva? ADA

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Carolyn Kunin

To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum

Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:28 AM

Subject: Casta Diva?

Dear Mr. Gill,

Is Ada over the top is a very good question. After wrestling with it for a year, I have pretty much concluded that it is. There may be a  there there, but it seems to me that if one can't find it after trying for a year, the problem may not be in the reader but in the read. Ada, in other words, seems to me to be out of all proportion (i.e., is "over the top"). My god, one could learn calculus in the time it takes to not understand Ada! If there is an answer, will it be worth the effort?

Some of Ada's images and questions will probably haunt me until someone discovers what it is that is going on in this anti-novel, but I have concluded that actively pursuing Ada is a losing game and I'm taking my marbles and going home.

Carolyn

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EDNOTE. ADA can indeed be discouraging in detail but  the general outlines are now reasonably clear thanks to a generation of scholarship.

For me, the pleasures  of reading. rereading, and researching far outweigh the not infrequent  frustrations.