One way the reader can tell Humbert Humbert is not Vladimir Nabokov: 'At one point he confuses a hummingbird and a hawksmoth[?], now I would never do that.'
Nabokov and Trilling on Lolita, Parts 1 and 2, mentioned in passing in Languagehat's post 'On Last Looking into A la recherche du temps perdu'.
2 comments:
How touchingly awkward VN is in this. The index cards, the attempt to pass off the highly-wrought as extemporaneous speech, the heavy breathing, the graceless shifting in his seat, the almost slovenly over-relaxed pose on the couch. Especially when juxtaposed with Trilling's suave urbanity, his coolly burning cigarette. And how odd is that sudden move to the couch? I have an almost familial affection for him. I've been reading him for so long he feels like a grandfather to me.
Here VN says "sob in the spine," but he usually says "throb," or alternatively "the bubble of bliss that bursts along the spine" (something like this). I wonder if "sob" is a slip. An interesting slip, anyway.
LOL!
This is so going on my facebook quotes.
SMB
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