Nabokov's Signs and symbols

[Mark Kohut]

This story it says appeared in book form in *Nabokov's Dozen, *which was a
mass market
paperback for a decent while in the sixties (if not earlier). I remember
thinking that he wasn't much
known for his short stories when I first read him so did not read any until
the big volume decades
later. Except for plunging into *Lolita, *which i did and which is great,
it would have eased one into
some of the other novels to have encountered some of the cleverest and best
stories earlier, I now think
in my "wiser" old age...

On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 2:26 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Okay Folks, high on meds making my head spin like a nabokovian chess
> player, I'll
> throw off one--my--possible reading of N's second (main) story inside this
> one. I'll take
> his suggestion as factual, in his way.
>
> VN hated that "witch doctor" Freud and all the ideas he rode in on and
> shrinks he spawned,
> So, the poor son is hurting and dangerous but all the reasons are
> irrelevant as given, wrong numbers,
> pattern finding that is itself a kind of madness.
>
> The couple want to bring him home for his safety, safeguarding themselves
> too but they are poor emigres who
> are clueless about their son.
>
> Two wrong number calls. The world has no answers.
>
> That third call.?
>
> And, yes, it reminds me of the very end of *The Crying of Lot 49* as it
> goes unanswered.
>
> Thanks, John. I woudda used it in my class had I known of it.
>
> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 4:21 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> And there is a good Murakami story that I would bet a jar of jelly on
>> this influenced. The existential phone calls one.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> > On Apr 23, 2017, at 9:00 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Nabokov's first story published in the New Yorker in 1948 is a tiny
>> > little piece that seems to me very relevant to readers of Pynchon.
>> > http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/05/15/symbols-and-signs
>> > He told the fiction editor that “a second (main) story is woven into,
>> > or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent one,” although from
>> > my reading this could be a tease, since there's such a heavy
>> > metafictional layer exploring our tendencies to "project a world"
>> > (COL49) when we're reading. Plus it tied in neatly to the discussion
>> > of weather in books had here recently, and Nabokov might be satirising
>> > the idea that climate is a conspiracy based on our mood.
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
>
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