Word: zoorland
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...embarks upon this gossamer fiction with a head stuffed full of what it does not mean. No, Field notwithstanding, the romantic hero, Martin Edelweiss, is not motivated toward self-eclipse by his parents' early separation. No, there is no connection between Glory's dream world of Zoorland and Pale Fire's Zembla. Though the author admits that Martin might be "a distant cousin with whom I share certain childhood memories," one is enjoined against "flipping through Speak, Memory [Nabokov's autobiography] in quest of duplicate items." Instead, the dutiful reader -always feeling vaguely inferior...
...when Sonia is behaving less churlishly than usual, she and Martin dream up a northern place called Zoorland. Abruptly, Martin embraces the imaginary country as his homeland and is last seen embarking on a trip across its borders. Unfortunately, Zoorland's physical equivalent is the Soviet Union, where the balmy pilgrim will almost certainly be shot as a spy. But his disappearance hardly seems tragic, for he is so patently a repository of memory and romance. Indeed, one of his earliest temptations is to step into a picture in his Crimean bedroom showing a path that disappears into...
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