As American as Apple-Beet Pie...
Jessa asks "Is Nabokov usually classified as an American writer?"
In my opinion, yes. Though he was of Russian origin, the depth and enthusiasm of his adoption of American language, culture, and milieu for the novels written after his emigration qualify him as an American writer. He's certainly one of the most linguistically accomplished writers in English to ever reside on these shores.
One can't discount his Russian extraction completely, nor his work in his first native tongue, but it's significant that once he arrived here, he essentially considered English his new native tongue.
So my position is that while he was here, he was an American author, and a very good one at that.
Or, to answer the question rhetorically, was Joseph Brodsky an American poet?
The permalink to Jessa's article is behaving badly, so just go to the main page and find the July 15, 2002 entries from there. This is the second time this week I've had this problem on a Blogger site. What's up with Blogger permalinks?
Blogchalking: I was afraid this might happen...
Remember Blogchalking?
It appears that Daypop has disabled the "blogchalk" keyword. All blogchalk searches now come up empty.
I rather suspected the search engine sites might not take kindly to this sort of direct manipulation of their engines, however well-meaning. It still works on Google, but we'll see how long that lasts.
07-16-2002 UPDATE: The blogchalk keyword appears to be back in action over at Daypop, so maybe it was just a bug, or maybe they have reversed their position and taken a sunnier view of the blogchalking phenomenon. We'll see.
I still think this practice will eventually be rejected by most search engines, though, or if not, it will eventually become useless, for the reasons so succinctly expressed by Kenan in the comments on this post.
I just like having the cute little wild-haired icon. It looks like a lemming.
Photo Day
Alas, I learned of this too late to participate, but check out the fruits of Photo Day, a collaborative documentary photo-blogging project taking place today.