Pniniad: Vladimir Nabokov and Marc Szeftel

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I am grateful to the Graduate School Fund of the University of Washington for the 1992 Summer Research Grant which allowed me to start working on this book, and for the Fund's 1993 Addendum to the same grant, which paid for travel to Ithaca in the fall of 1993. Special thanks go to Brian Boyd, D. Barton Johnson, and Daniel Waugh, who answered my questions and offered suggestions throughout my work on the manuscript and then readily agreed to critique the manuscript once it was ready, providing volumes of useful commentary without which this book would have been so much poorer. Dan Waugh was also instrumental in making me undertake this study, for it was he who alerted me to the existence of Marc Szeftel's archive at the Suzzallo Library of the University of Washington. I am also grateful to Robert Alter and an anonymous reader, whose evaluations of my manuscript for the University of Washington Press were very helpful and deeply gratifying. Robert Alter was among the first people who knew about my project back when I was still only contemplating it, and his encouragement and support at the time were invaluable. My heartfelt thanks and gratitude also go to: Marc Szeftel's family: especially Kitty Szeftel, who kindly and patiently spent many hours with me, both in person and on the phone, as well as Sophie Tatiana Keller, Marc Watson Szeftel, Daniel and Linda Crouse, Flora Sheffield, William Nemerever, and Donald Keller for their friendliness and eagerness to cooperate with my project, and for all the information they provided. My colleagues at the University of Washington: In addition to the late Donald Treadgold and Imre Boba, I thank Jack Haney, Willis Konick, Jim Augerot, Karl Kramer, Nora Holdsworth, Larry Lerner, and Peter Sugar, who shared their reminiscences with me, and, in some instances, served as consultants in matters where my own expertise was not sufficient; Hillel Kieval for materials on Jewish history, and help with Hebrew; and George Klim and Katarzyna Dziwirek for assisting me with Polish. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi Other fellow Nabokovians: Vladimir Alexandrov, for his early enthusiasm about the project and his encouragement; and Gene Barabtarlo and Stephen Jan Parker, for their readiness and willingness to share expertise, reminiscences , and advice. Other colleagues and friends: among them Beth Holmgren and Madeline Levine, who enlightened me on Polish intellectual history. People at Cornell and in Ithaca, who readily provided sought-after information in interviews and/or letters: M. H. Abrams, Gardner Clark, Peter Kahn, James McConkey, Charlotte Fogel, Walter M. Pintner, John Marcham, Knight Biggerstaff, Beatrice MacLeod, Milton Cowan, Gould P. Colman, William Brown, Milton Barnett, Dorothy Staller, and Marianne R. Marsh, Administrative Manager in the Department of English, who went beyond the call of duty to help me locate people I needed. Nabokov's and Szeftel's other colleagues, friends or students who responded to my inquiries in a most helpful fashion: Robert M. Adams, Vera S. Dunham, Franklin A. Walker, Daniel Matuszewski, R. E. Johnson, Gustave Alef, Charles Timberlake, John C. Cairns, Florence Clark, Lee Croft, George Gibian, John Trueman, and the late Harry Levin. I am also grateful to Steven Rudy for commenting on chapter 2 of the present study, sharing his thoughts on Roman Jakobson and Jakobson's collaboration with Szeftel and Nabokov, as well as for granting me permission , on behalf of The Roman Jakobson and Krystina Pomorska Jakobson Foundation, Inc., to publish for the first time Roman Jakobson's letters to Marc Szeftel. In addition, Alison Jolly was extremely helpful in commenting on the parts of this book which dealt with Nabokov's relationship with her father, Morris Bishop, and in making it possible for me to quote from Morris Bishop's unpublished letters. I would like to thank Dmitri Nabokov, who allowed me to publish his father's and mother's letters to Szeftel; John Marcham, who permitted me to quote from his father's unpublished reminiscences; Paul Gates, James McConkey, Stephen Jan Parker, and Charles Nicol, who agreed to let me quote from their letters to Marc Szeftel; and Cornell Magazine, which granted me permission to reprint Marc Szeftel's 1980 article, "Lolita at Cornell." Further gratitude and thanks go to: Naomi Pascal, associate director and editor-in-chief of the University of Washington Press, herself a former student of Professor Nabokov and life- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xii long admirer ofthe writer Nabokov, for believing in...