crab is king
I don't remember where I bought the used copy of Pnin I am now reading, but of course I neglected to see that someone had scribbled all over it. The offender's name is C.A. Hamilton, and his/her comments range from the pedantic and obvious ("first mention of narrator," "2nd mention of narrator," "meeting with ex-wife parallels meeting with squirrel, therefore wife = squirrel") to the pedantic and cryptic (many passages marked with the initials "P" and "A," or both) to the completely cryptic (Cyrillic alphabet, presumably Russian) to visceral reactions to the text ("oww," "oooww," "bitch") to the outright confessional ("somehow—oww—I am beginning to enjoy reading again," "damn scares and damn knowing how damn behind I am... knowing I can't slip up at all anymore... so much to do... to figure out... it requires focus... sitting still... desire... I'll have none of it [ellipses Hamilton's.]"). Halfway through the book the comments abruptly cease, as if the poor neurotic couldn't take it any more and had to cart Nabokov off to the used bookstore. Odds are 5 to 2 that I bought it in Iowa and the previous owner was a Workshopper, probably a poet.
