After a slight disappointment with Maar's book
on Nabokov (Banville had raised my expectations too high), I passed to the next
one which recently arrived in my distant shores (not any shore around here,
actually). The beautifully edited "Loving Dr. Johnson" by Helen Deutsch (The
University of Chicago Press,2005).
In the fly-leaf I read: " LDJ uses the enormous
popularity of Johnson to understand a singular case of author love and to
reflect upon what the love of authors has to do with the love of literature." In
her "Acknowlegdements," Deutsch mentions "to Sean Silver for the
epigraph to Pale Fire...to Dale Peterson for help with Nabokov..."
In the index we find at least nine entries on
different pages related to Nabokov, death of father, editor of Pushkin, editor
and translator of Shakespeare, "on life and art,", Pale Fire, Speak
Memory.
It seems that I shall have a very exciting
and full week-end with Johnson, icons, Deutsch and
...Nabokov.