----- Original Message -----
From: Dmitri
Nabokov
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 8:30 AM
I fully
agree with Tom Bolt's illustration of pseudo-similarity
and his appraisal of Bunin's stature. I remember Bunin as
being very charming when I met him as a small child. He should indeed be
translated. My only cavil with the admirable Tom is that the
nameless protagonist of The Enchanter dies not in a colllision, to be
exact, but beneath the wheels of a massive truck under which he has thrown
himself.
At the cost of
continuing to seem as "fussy" as VN, I would also like to add a
comment to Peter Terzian's informative "Nymphet Notes" (in New York
Newsday, May 30). If the reader to whom he recommends the
generally fine Everyman's edition of Lolita is a first-timer, he
should be made aware that, in its first run, this version omitted
the hilarious "John Ray, Jr, Ph.D" foreword, apparently on the
editorial assumption that John Ray was real but superfluous. As soon as the
blunder was brought to his attention, the publisher honorably withdrew and
replaced the faulty copies, but a few doubtless slipped through the net. My dear
friend Martin Amis's introduction is, in any case, excellent. Incidentally, the
humorless publishers of some of the awful editions of VN's Russian Lolita
have plunged into print with John Ray omitted altogether, or replaced by
one their "experts,"
For the record, Lila
Azam Zanganeh's interview with me (in French) appears in the May issue of
La Règle du jeu, a journal devoted to "literature, philosophy,
politics, and the arts." The issue also contains
a French translation of Lichberg's "Lolita,"
and a short but windy discussion of the confusion generated by Maar. A
page of Izvestia for 22 April was devoted to my father. A
fairly long interview with me (in French) is due in ten days in la
Revue automobile suisse.
Warm
greetings,
DN