R S Gwynn wrote: I wonder about the critics who find an anagram in "Vivian Badlook." I can't figure this one out, though there are two Vivians--photographer and child--in the novel, and the name obviously links to Darkbloom. The tourist and the seaside is an obvious anagram for V. N.

end of the novel ( a foreign couple and a guy with a butterfly-net on CCC's pages 901,916,919). There is also Blavdak Vinomori (page 905) and we learn that Vinomori's eyes are "walnut-brown" while Vladimir Nabokov's are "hazel-brown"...

I don't think that the two Vivian references must necessarily take us to Vivian Darkbloom (female or male, Lolita or ADA), but they might indicate Alfred Hitchcock who usually makes cameo appearances in his movies.

There are many references to Hitchcock in KQK, from the title of one of his movies "Shadow of a Doubt" (page 847) to "Psycho": there is Frau Kamelspinner, the taxidermist's wife ( page 759) and the obvious inexistent wife of Enricht Pharsin. Her first appearance: "There she is', cried the landlord. 'Sitting there in the arm-chair. Have a look.' He opened the door wider and over the back of the chair Franz glimpsed a grey head with something white pinned to its crown." (page 822) And, at last, on page 899: "The old woman whose face he had never seen sat with her back to him in her usual place.'I'm leaving; I want to say good-bye," he said, advancing toward the armchair. There was no old woman at all - only a grey wig stuck on a stick and a knitted shawl....Old Enricht came out from behind a screen. He was stark naked and had a paper fan in his hand. 'You no longer exist, Franz Bubendorf,'...

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