Round 6: Tossup 15

A story by this author consists of a letter to a “lady novelist” whom the narrator accuses of fictionalizing his own first love, but with all the facts wrong. This proponent of the “divine detail” wrote a story whose narrator fails to confess his love to the wife of a mediocre expatriate writer before a car crash kills her at the title “cloudy and dull” seaside town. A book of this author’s “dozen” collects a story that ends with a man reading the labels of jelly jars as a phone rings, as well as (*) “Spring in Fialta.” This author implied there were two plots in a story about a couple whose son is treated for “referential mania.” This author switched to English for the story “Signs and Symbols” and a novel in which he anagrammed himself as Vivian Darkbloom. (10[1])For 10 points, what Russian émigré created Humbert Humbert? ■END■ (10[1]0[1])

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