Referential Archive
The Art of the Sad Birthday
Are you a writer looking for a situation with built-in irony and ample opportunities for subtext? Have you considered a melancholy birthday scene? I’ve collected a few merciless examples for consideration. “Referential,” by Lorrie Moore Moore dives into the irony of the sad celebration in the first paragraph of
Fiction Responding to Fiction: Vladimir Nabokov and Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore’s story “Referential,” published in the New Yorker in 2012 and included in her 2014 collection Bark, is a clear homage to and reflection of Vladimir Nabokov’s story “Symbols and Signs,” published in 1948 in the New Yorker and included in his collection Nabokov’s Dozen a decade later.