<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt"><div>From: Allan Anderson <rubel@goosemoon.org><br>...<br>
<br>>I haven't really thought about Nabakov in a critical fashion, so perhaps that's <br>>why little occurs to me when comparing him to Wolfe. What's an interesting place <br>>to start? The way they present their narrators?<br>
<br>
Here's my post at NABOKV-L recommending Wolfe to the people there:<br>
<br><span>
<a target="_blank" href="http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0212&L=nabokv-l&P=R9842">http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0212&L=nabokv-l&P=R9842</a></span><br>
<br>
Here's one by another person:<br>
<br><span>
<a target="_blank" href="http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0504&L=nabokv-l&P=626">http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0504&L=nabokv-l&P=626</a></span><br>
<br>
Let me also quote a letter Nabokov wrote to Katharine White at the New
Yorker, who had rejected his story "The Vane Sisters" (which is on a
rather Wolfean theme):<br>
<br>
"Most of the stories I am contemplating (and some I have written in the
past--you actually published one with such an 'inside'--the one about
the old Jewish couple and their sick boy) will be composed on these
lines, according to this system wherein a second (main) story is woven
into, or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent story."<br>
<br>
It's not Nabokov's best sentence, but it sounds distinctly like Wolfe's system
to me. At least a lot of people here read Wolfe that way.<br>
<br>
(By the way, I recommend that story about the old Jewish couple, "Signs
and Symbols"--though over 60 years later, there's no consensus on the
interpretation.)<br>
<br>
Jerry Friedman<br>
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