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Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

Peder
You just happened to nick onto one of my tender points with the girly, frilly, doll stuff. :) All this pat the little girl on the head and send her out to play with her dolls stuff grates on my nerves. I was one of those kids that thought playing with dolls was silly, mostly because the girls I knew that did were vapid, shallow little twits. After (semi) growing up, I realized that the two did not equate, but the pattern was set.:eek: I was the one climbing trees, jumping off of second story porches (talk about silly!), and hiding in the back yard reading in my tent. In fact I even have a picture of myself at about 4 years old sitting by said tent reading. Have not stopped yet.:eek:

I was kidding around in my earlier post, but when I re-read it I saw that it could be taken badly. And I would never mean to do that.
 
pontalba said:
Lets not have any stereotypical typecasting claptrap here guys. :D

And dolls...........fuggettabtitttt...............ewwwww.
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Pontalba,

You mean that?............Taken badly?............

No, not at all. I don't mind the comment. It was certainly appropriate enough to nail a stereotypical remark. I know how chauvinist remarks have sounded coming out of the mouths of other guys. Ever since having two daughters growing up at just about of the beginning of the modern women's movement, I have become acutely aware of such attitudes and they have really grated on me as I have heard how benighted most men of those times were, and some still are :( I had one of my colleagues, for example, once tell me, then, "Well, women might be able to program computers, but a woman just can't understand radar" He was a real dinosaur! Actually in age, and also in thought and attitude.

Those were the days before there were any women in engineering. There still aren't many. And those were the days when my dughters going off to college were among the very first entrants into colleges that up until then had been all-male.

So, when I read your comment, I figured that I had stubbed my toe on a stone that I never thought I would, and that I had been properly corected. Of course, it is never exactly fun to stub one's toe, but now I have personally learned that it is still possible to make remarks that don't sit well. And I should of course be apologizing to you, so please take this as my sincere apology for having ruffled your feelings in any way.

I'm sincerely sorry,
Peder
 
Well, I can tell from your writing that you wouldn't make any comments that would 'stub your toe'. Thats really the trouble with not getting the body language and facial expressions.When I posted my remark, I was saying it with a tongue in cheek, 'listen here my friend' laughing tone. But that doesn't always translate well. And upon re-reading later thought it sounded rough. :eek: :( So I am the one sorry.
 
Pontalba,

But back to Lolita, and in a lighter vein, but not really when one thinks about it, one might typically say "Lolita would never recognize the world were she alive today."

And, as I thought to say exactly that, I realized that my daughters would have taken serious issue with me and pointed out that equality is not here even yet, Dad. Together with stern chapter and verse, were I inclined to doubt them.

Appel remarks that his notes are partly to explain references in the text that modern readers might not understand, because of the time in which the book was written. I never thought that was necessary because I understood those references perfectly well. :) :( But it sounds like Appel had a point. Is the detective "Jutting Chin" still around? :confused: :)

And nobody (else) need incriminate themself by knowing who he was. :D

But back to Lolita,
In the time warp,
Peder
 
OMG Pontalba!
You're there!
How did you do that?!
/bonking heads as we mutually bow to each other in apology :)/
Good morning!
Peder
 
Peder That was weird. :) But I just popped in for a moment earlier and then sanity took hold again, and I went back to sleep.:D

Now I do remember the '50's, at least the latter half quite well. A jutting chin detective......
Can't be Nero Wolfe, he was in the '30's.....Oh, did they mean Marlowe? That reference went right by me..........:confused:
 
pontalba said:
OH, OH, OH, ........ OF COURSE

DICK TRACY!!!!!
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Yes, indeed, Pontalba!

I don't know whether Appel gives the answer to that one or not, but I didn't think so. /furiously turns pages/ Ach! Actually he does and the reference appears in one of the more hilariious scens in the book. (p217) The Aztec Red Convertible is hot on his heels.
"As happens with me at periods of electriclal disturbance and crepitating lightnings, I had hallucinations, Maybe they were more than hallucinations. I do not know what she or he, or both, had put into my liquor but one night I felt sure somebody was tapping on the door of our cabin, and I flung it open, and noticed two things -- that I was stark naked and that, white glistening in the rain-dripping darkness, there stood a man holding before his face the mask of Jutting Chin, a grotesque sleuth in the funnies. He emitted a muffled guffaw and scurried away, and I reeled back into the room, and fell asleep again, and am not sure even to this day that the visit was not a drug provoked dream: I have thoroughly studied Trapp's type of humor and this might have been a plausible sample"......"Did I see next morning two urchins rummaging in a garbage can and trying on Jutting Chin? I wonder."
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Of course you saw it, Humbert, you dummy!

Here in the middle of the story VN is having fun with pranks! :D

Peder
 
While I was flipping over to p.217, my eye caught something about the "red Hood" on p.213, :
A very elderly, almost mummy-like couple in a very new model were in the act of creeping out of one of the contiguous garages; from another a red hood protruded in somewhat cod-piece fashion; and nearer to our cabin, a strong and handsome young man with a shock of black hair and blue eyes was putting a portable refrigerator into a station wagon. For some reason he gave me a sheepish grin as I passed.
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codpiece: a pouch, esp. a conspicuois and decorative one, attached to a man's breeches or close fitting hose to cover the genitals, worn in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Origin from earlier cod 'scrotum' (from Old English codd "bag, pod' + piece
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from The New Oxford American Dictionary

The red hood had to be Quilty's car, and the pun All VN's..........:D
 
And now for $64,000,000,000,000,000. and no sense.

On p254: "good girl, red hair, handsome daddums clipped mustache"

Appel refers to this only as one of "two ... generalized and invented comic strips."

But here I think he missed, because they have to be
Little Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks

The other comics he includes ring no bell with me. But, while on the topic, I have to say that I am dreadfully disappointed that he didn't think to include my favorite, Prince Valiant. :(

If anyone wishes to have a shot at:

p254: "bad girl dark hair fat father cigar"

or

p254: "that repulsive comic strip with the big gagoon and his wife, a kiddoid gnomide"

Be my guest. But you'll have to provide the correct answer along with your guess because I haven't the faintest idea :D and seemingly neither does Appel.

And that's all for this week, kiddies,
Tune in next week for more funnies!
Meanwhile, drink your Ovaltine!
Your Uncle Don,
er, Peder
 
The red hood had to be Quilty's car, and the pun All VN's..........
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And the Nabokov I am coming to know would never settle for a phrase with a double meaning when he could get three or more out it. ;)

In the paragraph above, when HH refers to Lolita as "my monkey", I flashed on an image of "a monkey on his back." Appel was certainly fortunate to be in a position to ask The Man himself about these things, wasn't he? The rest of us may only surmise ...

I honestly believe we could do this type of analysis with practically every paragraph in the book without coming up empty-handed. I find myself wondering how many times Nabokov rewrote and edited Lolita.
 
pontalba said:
While I was flipping over to p.217, my eye caught something about the "red Hood" on p.213, :
...

from The New Oxford American Dictionary

The red hood had to be Quilty's car, and the pun All VN's..........:D
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Pontalba,

It did have to be!

Chuckling out loud! :) - :) - :) - :)

Peder
 
StillILearn said:
And the Nabokov I am coming to know would never settle for a phrase with a double meaning when he could get three or more out it. ;)

In the paragraph above, when HH refers to Lolita as "my monkey", I flashed on an image of "a monkey on his back." Appel was certainly fortunate to be in a position to ask The Man himself about these things, wasn't he? The rest of us may only surmise ...

I honestly believe we could do this type of analysis with practically every paragraph in the book without coming up empty-handed. I find myself wondering how many times Nabokov rewrote and edited Lolita.
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StillILearn,

Triple indeed!!!!

He used index cards to make life easier ..... for himself.

He rewrote, Vera retyped. He rewrote, Vera retyped. He rewrote, Vera retyped.................

I think Vera gives the number of times that she retyped the entire manuscript for Lolita. Six or seven comes to mind. One more thing to check. :(

And at times the editing was definitely collaborative, as she would type and ask him if he really wanted it that way, and he would write and ask her how a particular wording sounded. Plus she did all the correspondence with publishers, tanslators, editors, et al, and all the driving on their butterfly trips during the summer. Road trips, road trips? Where have I heard road trips before? :)

Groooooaaaaannnnn,
Her poor fingers,
Quite a woman!
Peder
 
Possible evidence that Humbert would not re-offend. And perhaps of his true love [as far as he was capable] for Lolita. p. 257

I would be a knave to say, and the reader a fool to believe, that the shock of losing Lolita cured me of pederosis. My accursed nature could not change, no matter how my love for her did. On playgrounds and beaches, my sullen and stealthy eye, against my will, still sought out the flash of a mymphet's limbs, the sly tokens of Lolita's handmaids and rosegirls. But one essential vision in me had withered: never did I dwell now on possibilities of bliss with a little maiden, specific or synthetic, in some out-of -the-way place; never did my fancy sink its fangs into Lolita's sisters, far far away, in the coves of evoked islands. That was all over, for the time being at least.
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It was at that point Rita entered into the picture. Note her physical appearance on p. 258. Nymphet like a bit. Plus she was another 'victim' type.
 
pontalba said:
Peder Sometimes I wonder if even VN at the end of it all had all the layers/puns correct! :)
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Pontalba,
I have visions of him running down to the printer as they are just about to start publishing, saying, "One more! One more!" :)

And as usual you are way ahead of me! (And don't deny it as usual :D)
But the Katzenjammer Kids never crossed my mind! I now see that they were even a little older than my father when he was reading them to me! Amazing to realize that! Two generations reading and growing up with the same comic strip. Although I suppose we are now into that territory with Lolita, the book, now being 50 years old. That's amazing too!

It's about time someone says, "It's amazing how time flies!" :rolleyes:

Peder
 
pontalba said:
Possible evidence that Humbert would not re-offend. And perhaps of his true love [as far as he was capable] for Lolita. p. 257.
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Pontalba,That is really a quite an amazing quote! (While I am on an 'amazing' kick. :eek: )
It is exactly as if Nabokov had his finger exactly on the main question that would be occupying us and he provided a very precise answer! Silly to say, of course, since he wrote the book and presumably thought about such things before he started. But amazing (to me) nevertheless. Not only that, but it sounds convincing! Great catch Pontalba! "If I live to be five hunnert years...." :D

But I dearly wish he wouldn't say things like "She was twice Lolita's age and three-quarters mine" on the next page, p258. I thought I escaped those things 'way back in, what, intermediate algebra? elementary algebra? There's another one or two in the book, and I am definitely going to leave them to the next mathematician to come along in a Lolita forum to figure them out. I assume they are exactly correct! :) :) :) Without checking! :)

And BTW, I like that poem just before, on p255-6, In a Pale Fire forum on NYT, I put up one of the early posts saying I thought the book opened with a great poem. In fact it tells the story of the entire first half of the book. Someone commented stuffily that VN's poetry was quite mediocre and that he would have no reputation at all if it came down to just his poetry alone. And the Cambridge Companion to Nabokov says about the same thing.

However, I really don't care. I find that poem and this one easy to read and this one, when you come right down to it, quite affecting in the simplicity and clarity of the story it tells, and in the pouring out of the heart-felt emotions of the author, Humbert. Especially that final stanza -- Nabokov is great at final paragarphs!!!! And it also reminds me of Jown Baez' "Diamonds and Rust." I can hear her mournful voice singing it now.

Any way, enough sentiment,
Especially about Humbert!
(Think of that! :eek: )
Peder
 
Peder

The Katzenjammer Kids was something that I too grew up on. I well remember my father reading it and laughing himself silly over it. So I have always had a sentimental attachment to them. :) But I have to admit in all honesty that Google is a strange and wonderful instrument...:cool: I used to have trouble narrowing things down on it, and a friend told me to simply put "Quotes" around the words. But I still have no idea at all regarding the dark haired bad girl with the fat daddy with a cigar. :( It must have been fairly well known, or VN wouldn't have used it so casually. Hmmm.....

Well, we know that Humbert would be 104 years old now..........in 2006. It always amused me that he was referred to as such an "older man" Good Grief! In 1947 he'd only have been 44.........a mere youngster. Just getting good! :D You know the trouble is I have James Mason in my mind as I think of Humbert, and I was crazy about him, um when I was younger........of course. :)

I thought about "Pale Fire" as well. I've never been much on poetry, but the one in Lolita is heartwrenching in its own way.......
 
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