Late-breaking news: Nabokov never heard of the parenthesis
25 November 2009
Did Vladimir Nobokov invent the emoticon? MobyLives recently stumbled upon this exchange from a 1969 interview with the New York Times (and included in the collection Strong Opinions) in which the great author says:
How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?
I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile– some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.
He was uncompromising as ever. He wanted concave AND supine.