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136:(1957), Pnin complains that a librarian has changed volume 19 to volume 18 and gotten the wrong year in his request for a book from 1947, saying, "They can't read, these women! The year was plainly inscribed." Regarding "beech", Drescher argues that it is the husband's misreading of the label, "an example of typographical
126:". Alexander Drescher has argued that Nabokov intended the latter two points to be among the story's "signs and symbols". With his paragraphing, the story's sections have 7, 4, and 19 paragraphs, indicating the year it takes place, 1947. (Drescher credits this connection to Anthony Stadlen.) In the
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An elderly couple tries to visit their mentally ill son in a sanatorium on his birthday. They are informed that he attempted to take his life and they cannot see him now. After their return home, the husband announces his decision to take him out of the sanatorium. The story concludes with mysterious
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version still contained four editorial changes that
Nabokov eliminated in later publications. One was that the title was reversed as mentioned above. The second was that instead of numbers for the three sections, the sections were separated by ellipses. The third was that two paragraphs were
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Some critics have argued that the story's many details can be deciphered into a message—for instance that the son has committed suicide, or that he is in an afterlife and free from his torments, or that the third phone call is from him, saying that he has escaped from the asylum. However, the
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The son suffers from "referential mania", where "the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence". "Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme". Real people are excluded from this
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predominant interpretation is that the story inveigles the reader into an attempt at deciphering the details and thus "over-reading", which is "another, milder form of referential mania".
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telephone calls. The first two apparently misdialed calls are from a girl asking for "Charlie"; the story ends when the phone rings for the third time.
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version, the last section had 18 paragraphs. To support his claim that the connection to 1947 is intentional, Drescher notes that in
Nabokov's novel
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woods", and Pnin thinks of "Buchenwald" and "beechwood" (for cremation) together.
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Anatomy of a Short Story: Nabokov's
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The Signs and
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273:Boyd, Brian
25:short story
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382:2012-02-12
324:2010-03-13
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258:2017-10-19
230:References
150:Buchenwald
146:Buchenwald
128:New Yorker
124:beach plum
119:New Yorker
108:New Yorker
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1017:Carrousel
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555:The Gift
378:, Zembla
275:(1993),
176:See also
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1034:Related
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520:The Eye
491:Russian
477:(works)
345:(ed.),
152:means "
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