Yes, the Christie’s website is poorly designed. Striking? Yes. But with terrible navigation. Some (most? I haven’t counted) of the books had been put up for auction before. Yeah, those prices will draw bidders and then the results will probably suppress the prices of those books already in dealers’ and collectors’ hands.

Thoughts about the stave and notes in the Field book (lot 395). Realize that in the technical sense I am essentially immusical: Instead of f-e-f-g with the bottom line of the stave missing, could it be d-c-d-e with the top line missing? Or instead of the treble clef, is this the bass clef? Is it a code? A bar from an aria Dmitri, the bass, sang?

A Dutch Nabonut friend, Martin Kaaij, who is also a professional musician, wrote me:

You are right about the clefs. There are three kinds ( the third is called tenor) and you can put them anywhere on the stave. They only indicate where the g, f or c is and then you go up and down from that point. So the code may be any three letters with the same relative positions in the alphabet. agab, babc etc. A bar from an aria by Dmitri is possible as well. Or it might be Dmitri’s name in music: d mi=e (do re mi = c d e) tri=c, or something a bit less far fetched. Or the missing line on the stave might be a pun on Field’s sloppy work. There are simply too many possibilities to find a conclusive answer. And what’s more, if it is a riddle the solution should be an elegant one.

There’s a real chance there will be some bargains. But how to sniff them out?

Some of this stuff—I don’t know how much—has been in Glenn Horowitz’s hands several times. I remember seeing some of it many years ago when he had a small office near Grand Central Terminal. Many of those were non-VN books from VN’s personal library—books presented to him or which he had bought and sometimes marked up. Later, after Glenn moved uptown to a brownstone at E 76th St off of Madison, he had many wonderful VN pieces. That was when he put those labels into the volumes, the labels that say “From the library of Vladimir Nabokov…” By my count, 46 of the lots in this auction that comprise only one book have that label. And the lots that comprise several books have some volumes with the labels. The labeling happened in 1999 in conjunction with the issue of Horowitz’s Vera’s Butterflies catalog.

The point is that Glenn has tried to move many if not all of these books several times. He succeeded with some. I know that Cornell got the sole copy of Dva puti at the same time it bought several others. Sometimes dealers went to Montreux and bought copies directly from Dmitri. One was Ralph Sipper.

So nobody wants all of these books. That’s like trying to eat a meal of only rich, gourmet chocolate desserts. The constitution, in this case the book-buying Nabokovians, can digest only so much. And that’s why I think that dozens of these books won’t sell. But, again, how to determine which are the least appetizing and affordable?

There are many things VN I haven’t seen, including a copy of the 1920 Entomologist offprint. But, based on how scientific journals in those days worked, I was pretty sure that there had been some offprints. And so I said in my bibliography, “…most probably this item exists.” And I was right. Sometimes you shoot semi-blindly and actually hit the target.

My copy of the catalog arrived. I made a preliminary pass through it and that lot #344 is one I am interested in. There are a dozen others. I’ll have to email some questions of clarification to the curators.

I’m in the same quandary all of us with limited means are in: how to decide what to focus on, how to follow the action, how to most efficiently place bids. I don’t know what I’ll do.

Is the Nabokov book-dealing/collecting/buying world ready and willing to buy some 150+ artifacts of VN’s (signed/lepidopterized/inscribed/corrected) personal life all at one time? I’m thinking that a collector will think, “I might be able to afford to buy one, maybe two lots. But that’s it”. And a dealer will think, “If all of us dealers buy several lots, who are we going to sell them to? The serious collectors will have already bought at the auction. And I’ll be sitting on these books for years.” So, my first consideration is, “What can the world absorb?”

How to bid? Stay home and do it over the internet? Or by telephone? Or fly to London for the action? Let’s give that last one a few seconds’ thought: airfare, hotel, meals. $2000 for a couple of days? Nah! I’d rather put the money into a book I don’t yet have. Maybe, if I’m lucky, one with a butterfly.

It’s an intriguing situation. Dmitri and Christie’s have decided to start out low (at about half what they would get at retail), to draw us in. So, I think, most of the lots will sell. This is a total turnaround from the Tajan sale in Geneva in 2004 when Dmitri consigned too many books at extremely high estimates and absolutely nothing sold, as far as I can tell. A complete fiasco and embarrassment.

I’m certainly going to consider bidding on a few of the lots. But I’ll have to go into family financial consulting mode first.

Ridiculously low estimates, obviously to lure bidders in. At those expectations, most of the lots should sell. But there are so many. Do you want the typewriters his wife or secretary used, but which he never touched, to transcribe from his index cards? I don’t.

Dmitri Nabokov has consigned 111 lots of Nabokoviana–books (inscribed/signed/lepidopterized/annotated) and personal belongings–to Christie’s, London, South Kensington, for auction on 13 June.

See the details and an ecatalog at Christie’s.

Some thoughts:

That’s a lot of Nabokov lots—112 of them (including the outlier, lot 281, not from Dmitri Nabokov). I think Dmitri has made the same mistake again—consigning too much at once. I certainly understand the desire to create excitement by offering so many eye-watering items at the same time. But I doubt the market can bear the load.

And those prices! So out of line with the marketplace. Only one explanation: Start everything attractively low to pull in the bidders and then let their desires and enthusiasms push up the prices. But I am certain that some lots at affordable prices will sneak through. I’ve got my eyes on a few, but only if…

I think a tip-off on the reasoning on the prices is the plain and lonesome non-DN lot #281 of his Russian Mashen’ka at US$6100-9000. That is ridiculously high for such a beat up copy. It will never sell. Obviously, the consignor thought very differently than Dmitri.

Whatever the case, I’ve just ordered my copy of the catalog.

Be aware that on the Christie’s website, the online list isn’t complete. It shows only 52 lots. Look at the electronic version of the catalog instead, starting on p. 97.