Lorrie Moore wrote "Referential" openly as a tribute to Nabokov. Simultaneously, she published "Wings" in The Paris Review's recent 200th issue, inspired by Henry James. She explains this in a Q&A on The New Yorker's site: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/this-week-in-fiction-lorrie-moore.html

She also says that she does not intend to write any further "tributes."

What has been called a copy-cat or plagiarism here on Nabokov-L is really just a fairly standard artistic tribute. Just as musicians play the work of another, just as Ulysses was based on the Odyssey, Rent based on La Boheme, and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings based on Der Ring Des Nibelungen, which was based on mythology before that. 

Furthermore, Ms. Moore has been one of America's most gifted writers for almost three decades. Her short story collections Self-Help and Birds of America are widely considered to be in the highest echelons of contemporary U.S. writing. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs, is an extremely impressive work. She is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. She is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In other words, she is no hack. 

One may certainly object to Ms. Moore's story on aesthetic grounds if they wish ( I personally found her story a charming reworking of Nabokov's tale and not at all offensive to the original "Signs and Symbols"), but to suggest that the New Yorker is guilty of publishing plagiarized work is absurd, and to accuse Ms. Moore of writing the same is libelous. 

Thank you,

Samuel Newhouse