Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

[pontalba]

That's funny, Peder! I have yet to read The Idiot, but it just went straight onto my TBR list.

And, steffee, if my memory serves me right, I would guess that Eeyore is the major problem child in the Pooh series. What d'ya think?

Take the Pooh personality test

Never read any of the Pooh series. I think I skipped right from Hans Andersen and Nancy Drew to "The House of Krupp".

 

[steffee]

That's funny, Peder! I have yet to read The Idiot, but it just went straight onto my TBR list.

And, steffee, if my memory serves me right, I would guess that Eeyore is the major problem child in the Pooh series. What d'ya think?

Take the Pooh personality test

Great I am most like Christopher Robin

Oh no, now you've got me reading the Winnie the Pooh FAQs

 

[Peder]

That's funny, Peder! I have yet to read The Idiot, but it just went straight onto my TBR list.

And, steffee, if my memory serves me right, I would guess that Eeyore is the major problem child in the Pooh series. What d'ya think?

Take the Pooh personality test

Still,
Just checked amazon and saw that I stretched Steffee's definition. She asked about a book without cruelty, I believe. The Idiot only has a character who is all good. The usual conflicts seem to be there in the book, stemming from guess what? A love triangle! /yawn/ Other parts of the author's xenophobia also don't sound so attractive if you check amazon. I was rather taken aback.

And if eeyore is too much of a problem also, then it sounds like our list of two is rapidly shrinking to embarassing proportions.

Peder

 

[StillILearn]

Eeyore may be a bit of a pessimist, but I can't think of any actual cruelty that has been attributed to him or to anybody else in 100 Aker Woods.

 

[steffee]

The Idiot only has a character who is all good. The usual conflicts seem to be there in the book, stemming from guess what? A love triangle! /yawn/ Other parts of the author's xenophobia also don't sound so attractive if you check amazon. I was rather taken aback.

And if eeyore is too much of a problem also, then it sounds like our list of two is rapidly shrinking to embarassing proportions.

Oh dear. Thinking caps are needed then, I guess.

 

[steffee]

What about The Wizard of Oz?

 

[pontalba]

What about The Wizard of Oz?

The Wiked Witch of the West

 

[pontalba]

I've got to start previewing my posts.....

Wicked....oy!

 

[Peder]

I've got to start previewing my posts.....Wicked....oy!

Pontalba,
Only if you think the rest of us can spel.
I didn't see anything wrong
Peder

 

[StillILearn]

That spelling works in 100 Aker woods!

 

[pontalba]

The Annotated Lolita

Interesting tidbit.. in the introduction p. xxxix

...it is only Humbert who is both victim and victimizer, thus making him unique among Nabokov's first-person narrators... By having Humbert tell the tale, Nabokov created for himself the kind of challenge best described in Chapter Fourteen of Speak Memory when, in a passage written concurently with the early stages of Lolita, he compares the composition of a chess problem to "the writing of one of those incredible novels where the author, in a fit of lucid madness, has set himself certain unique rules that he observes, certain nightmare obstacles that he surmounts, with the zest of a deity building a live world from the most unlikely ingredients--rocks, and carbon, and blind throbbings"

and the footnote reads:

And speaking specifically of the writing of Lolita, he says, "She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle--its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look."

Puzzle.....chess.....Nabokov.

 

[Peder]

Puzzle.....chess.....Nabokov.

Pontalba,
I have always wondered what those unique and difficult rules were that he set for himself in creating the Lolita puzzle. Seemingly that the narrator be both victim and victimizer, maybe. That the girl be underage, perhaps? Maybe all the things we have disagreed about? Or maybe refusing to have any all-good or all-bad people? (Well, no, there was Quilty.)
I think if a goal was to confuse or mislead the reader, he came darn near committing the perfect crime. Enjoyable as it was.
And I didn't notice the carbon so much, but he did manage to work in the throbbings.
Peder

 

[steffee]

Has anyone read The Real Life of Sebastian Night? I saw it in the uni library today and ended up reading the first sixty-odd pages. I was fretting that I'd forgotten my library card so couldn't get it out, but then I looked at the slip inside only to discover nobody has borrowed it since 1999 so I don't think I need to worry!

They also had Look at the Harlequins

And a companian type of book called Vladimir Nabokov : His Life, His Work, His World : a Tribute by Peter Quennell

 

[pontalba]

And I didn't notice the carbon so much, but he did manage to work in the throbbings.
Peder

Yes indeed /she said in the driest tone imaginable possible/ he certainly did. LOL
Peder! You certainly take the prize for understatement!!

 

[pontalba]

Has anyone read The Real Life of Sebastian Night? I saw it in the uni library today and ended up reading the first sixty-odd pages. I was fretting that I'd forgotten my library card so couldn't get it out, but then I looked at the slip inside only to discover nobody has borrowed it since 1999 so I don't think I need to worry!

They also had Look at the Harlequins

And a companian type of book called Vladimir Nabokov : His Life, His Work, His World : a Tribute by Peter Quennell

Just when I thought it was save to go back into the water...!!! You come up with a title I have not seen...aaarrrggghhh!
I do have TRLoSK, and is probably next in the stack. At this particular moment at any rate. We know how that can change.

 

[steffee]

Just when I thought it was save to go back into the water...!!! You come up with a title I have not seen...aaarrrggghhh!
I do have TRLoSK, and is probably next in the stack. At this particular moment at any rate. We know how that can change.

Ooops, spelling error

Yeah, Sebastian Knight, is brilliant from what I've read so far

 

[Peder]

Yeah, Sebastian Knight, is brilliant from what I've read so far

Oh Steffee!,
That I am very glad to hear! I have both Sebastian Knight and Harlequins mainly because they are described as among his 'complicated' works, and I like complicated. But to hear that one of them is brilliant is very good news indeed!
The Quennell sounds like it should be good also, in getting the reader back to when VN was writing. (Or at least I hope so. I'm always so hopeful. ). All depends what 'world' means, I suppose.
Many thanks for both,
Peder

 

[steffee]

Oh Steffee!,
That I am very glad to hear! I have both Sebastian Knight and Harlequins mainly because they are described as among his 'complicated' works, and I like complicated. But to hear that one of them is brilliant is very good news indeed!
The Quennell sounds like it should be good also, in getting the reader back to when VN was writing. (Or at least I hope so. I'm always so hopeful. ). All depends what 'world' means, I suppose.
Many thanks for both,
Peder

I think we all (on this thread anyway!) have a velleity for "complicated". I had no idea what these stories were about as they were in very very old hardback covers, with no synopsis (synopsese? synopsis'? whatever) whatsoever, so I kinda jumped in blind.

I've amazoned the Quennell but can't gather much from it, other than it was written in 1979/1980 and Quennell has written many other criticisms of other writers works.

 

[pontalba]

I've amazoned the Quennell but can't gather much from it, other than it was written in 1979/1980 and Quennell has written many other criticisms of other writers works.

Me too. /sigh/

just as well, I have to stop somewhere...

 

[pontalba]

This is the opening meeting of "The Society of Resistance To Buying Non-Core Nabokov". Will everyone please say "Hello", and acknowledge that they are powerless against the Pull of Nabokov...

Hi! My name is Pontalba, and I am a Nabokov Nut


Come to order..................You over there struggling with that other person, yes YOU....stop it....now...come to Order!!