📄 Extracted Text (262 words)
From: Ed <
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2013 2:43 PM
To: Epstein, Jeff
Subject: Happy Birthday
Hi Jeff
Happy Birthday. Also thanks for the coffee (Jennifer is a superb =rewer). In looking back at my class notes, you may be
interested in =abokov's first-day of instructions to the students in Lit 311 on =onday, September 14, 1953, the first day
of his day of teaching at =ornell. It was also my first lecture course. After telling us to =ake (and stay in) numbered seats
in the lecture hall (which had about =00 seats), and introducing Vera Nabokov. Who sat on a chair on stage =acing him.
as the course assistant, he said what we, readers, needed =o read novels was 1)a good memory 2)artistic feelings, and 3)
a good =ictionary. He then said it was a fatal mistake, though a current =rend in academia, to search for historical or
social meaning because a =reat novel is a pure invention by the author, and like nature, a =eception. He also warned
against identifying with any of the =haracters/ Instead, he said we should be looking for "a tingling in =he spine." The
author were enchanters, and created their effects by =rchestrating details that evoked pictures in our head.
PS. I don't think I ever of throw h The Gift thou h, fdollowing his =nstructions, I bathed myself in the details Best
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EFTA_R1_01371010
EFTA02370024
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