By Martin
Gardner, In response to Happy Families (May 22,
1969)
To the Editors:
NYR readers may be amused to
know more about why Nabokov, as pointed out in Matthew Hodgart's excellent
review of ADA (May 22), refers to me on p. 542 of his novel as an
"invented philosopher." In my Ambidextrous Universe (Basic Books, 1964),
in a section on Kant's approach to space and time, I quote two lines from
Pale Fire. (Nabokov's page citation is to the British Penguin Press
edition; he will find his lines rendered in Russian on p. 159 of a Russian
paperback translation.) I did not mention Nabokov but credited the poem instead
to his invented poet, John Shade. Nabokov returns the joke by calling me
"invented," since my book appeared on Terra, a perhaps imaginary earth, whereas
the action of ADA occurs on Anti-Terra, an earth of antimatter.
(Nabokov's novel exploits the familiar science-fiction concept of "parallel
worlds" first used so entertainingly by H. G. Wells in his greatest Utopia
novel, Men Like Gods.)