Activity

Before leaving the library, he decided to look up the correct pronunciation of 'interested', and discovered that Webster, or at least the battered 1930 edition lying on a table in the Browsing Room, did not place the stress accent on the third syllable, as he did. He sought a list of errata at the …

He also perused the current item in a tremendously long and tedious controversy between three emigre factions. It had started by Faction A's accusing Faction B of inertia and illustrating it by the proverb. 'He wishes to climb the fir tree but is afraid to scrape his shins.' This had provoked an ac…

And after a bathetic sojourn on Ellis Island, Timofey and Liza parted

[...] Liza Bogolepov, a medical student just turned twenty, and perfectly charming in her black silk jumper and tailor-made skirt, was already working at the Meudon sanatorium directed by that remarkable and formidable old lady, Dr Rosetta Stone, one of the most destructive psychiatrists of the day…

[...] On the contrary, he was perhaps too wary, too persistently on the look-out for diabolical pitfalls, too painfully on the alert lest his erratic surroundings (unpredictable America) inveigle him into some bit of preposterous oversight. It was the world that was absent-minded and it was Pnin wh…