Sorry.
While agreeing that there indeed was an "American Edition" of the
'Herald Tribune' in June, 1962, Dmitri alerted me to a typo in my
transcription of the Dolbier interview. It should be "book", not
"books": "[MM] discovered more of the book...". When I searched for
interview mss. at the Berg Collection about twelve years ago, the
Dolbier ms. didn't seem to be there. But it may very well exist, and we
would all be privileged to have the remarks Nabokov made on this
occasion in full. At that time, seven weeks after the book's
publication, he seems to have begun suspecting that many readers would
not get the novel's "plums" and that in this special case a little help
might be appropriate.
One more footnote about the date palm
in New Wye's Shakespeare Alley. In her book 'Véra' (p.269-70), Stacy
Schiff tells that in September 1960, towards the end of the couple's
stay in the Los Angeles area, "Véra undertook several arcane research
assignments: She compiled a catalogue of tree descriptions--'a
hoar-leaved willow,' 'a cloven pine,' 'a knotty-entrailed oak'--in
Shakespeare. She set the word-golf records of which Kinbote
brags..." So indeed the trees do come straight out of Shakespeare.
Where else could they come from, as there is no Shakespeare Alley
anywhere and probably could not be one for reasons of climate and soil?
But the date of this is interesting. Immediately after he had handed
Kubrick his abridged 'Lolita' screenplay, Nabokov began to think about
his next novel which was to become 'Pale Fire'. As Brian Boyd tells us,
it was properly "conceived" a few weeks later on his way back to
Europe, November 2-7 on the Queen Elizabeth. That means Nabokov knew
even in the initial stages that he wanted his emerging New Wye to have
a Shakespeare Alley and that he went about it very deliberately. So the
phoenix will not be a slip of attention. It seems to me he
wanted Kinbote to describe the alley regardless of its being
botanically unlikely. My guess is that the idea of having all
Shakespearean trees lined up appealed to him but that he needed a
botanically reckless madman to actually imagine it. Moreover, he had to
supply him with a motive to go there in spite of his botanical
indifference, and he gave him one in the person of the young gardener
who tended the trees.
Dieter Zimmer, Berlin
Nov 15, 2006