Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

[Peder]

At this point they are all referring to Lolita as "the little girl".

Very cloak and daggerish stuff, yes?

Still,
My tongue is hanging out and you have me drooling.
Price is getting to be (almost) no object. I shall scour the second-hands until I find one. Ten, twenty years whatever.
Peder

 

[StillILearn]

Boffola

To: Burma-Vita Co.

August 22, 1953

Gentlemen:

I am writing to offer you the following jingle for your entertainng collection:

He passes two cars; then five; then seven;
and then he beat them all to Heaven.

If you think you can use it, please send cheque to address given above.

Yours truly,
Vera Nabokov

(Mrs) Vladimir Nabokov

Anybody else here old enough to remember the Burma Shave signs?

 

[StillILearn]

Still,
My tongue is hanging out and you have me drooling.
Price is getting to be (almost) no object. I shall scour the second-hands until I find one. Ten, twenty years whatever.
Peder

For $75.57 I will send you this copy. It's in what I would call 'fine' condition!

Joke!

 

[StillILearn]

To: James Laughlin

July 4, 1954

Dear Mr Laughlin,

Vladimir asks me to find out if you have returned from your Asian trip, and if you would care to read his manuscript now, in spite of the very rigid conditions he is forced to stipulate about this MS.

If you think you can find time to read it yourself, he will have it sent to you. Should you feel that you want it for publication after having read it, you might naturally want to have the opinion of one of your readers. But Vladimir would like to be sure that you will not show it to anyone unless you are reasonably certain that you desire to publish the book. The sender named on the package will be a friend of ours living in New York.

i hope you have had an interesting and successful journey.

Sincerely,

(unsigned)

Interestingly, one of the letters I have copied above was written while they were on vacation at a place less than ten miles from where I was living at the time. (Of course I would not have even recognized the name back in the fifties.)

 

[Peder]

Anybody else here old enough to remember the Burma Shave signs?

Still, Oh Yes!
And to think that VN might have appeared on them if things had worked out!
What distinguished advertising that would have been.
Collector's item road signs!
Peder

 

[Peder]

Here we go. Doesn't look as if it'll come cheap. Maybe you should just 'borrow' it from your local library.

Selected Letters

Still,
Oh thank you so much for that link, you Beguiler, you!
Now my lust is worse than ever, especially since those used PB prices look pretty reasonable. And past experience tells me they can be in very strikingly good condition. Near new, or actually new (overstock). One just has to look.
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Still,
Oh thank you so much for that link, you Beguiler, you!
Now my lust is worse than ever, especially since those used PB prices look pretty reasonable. And past experience tells me they can be in very strikingly good condition. Near new, or actually new (overstock). One just has to look.
Peder

Sorry to be the bearer of troublesome news.....but....the paperbacks are not used.

 

[Peder]

Sorry to be the bearer of troublesome news.....but....the paperbacks are not used.

I am surrounded, surrounded I tell you!
Well I guess the only solution is not to look.
Oy!

 

[pontalba]

I am surrounded, surrounded I tell you!
Well I guess the only solution is not to look.
Oy!

An honest man! He knows and acknowledges that he knows it!

 

[Peder]

An honest man! He knows and acknowledges that he knows it!

And I honestly think I have to call it quits for the evening.
G'night all,
CU tmw

 

[pontalba]

Well, Peder, another fine job, by your treasury men in action!
Night

 

[Peder]

Sorry to be the bearer of troublesome news.....but....the paperbacks are not used.

Pontalba,
Yes, well, I ordered one into the local Borders for pickup there. We'll see how that route works.
Many thanks, I think, j/k j/k
If worse comes to worse, I can find a book to recomment to you j/k j/k
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba,
Yes, well, I ordered one into the local Borders for pickup there. We'll see how that route works.
Many thanks, I think, j/k j/k
If worse comes to worse, I can find a book to recomment to you j/k j/k
Peder

Right! Thats never happened!

and btw.......yay!

 

[Peder]

As mentioned over on the other thread, I have finally been catching up with reading the Lolita Commemorative essays in the Christmas 2005 issue of Playboy. Here's a long excerpt from the essay by Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran.

One particular women was so antagonistic -- not just toward me but toward Nabokov as well. Her basic point was: How could you say that women and especially girls could ever appreciate a book like this, which celebrates a pedophile? Yes, on one level one could say that it is about Humbert and his obsession with Lolita, but it's also a celebration of the beauty and poignancy of an ordinary little girl, the way she sighs in class or plays tennis: we see her humanity even as Humbert confiscates her life, rewriting it. When she says the worst thing about death is being alone, we're reminded of her helplesness. What I wish I could have told this woman at the conference is that Lolita, like all of Nabokov's works, challenges the kind of reader who goes into a novel searching to be calmed, searching for his or her own assertions, not to discover something. What frightens us about people like Humbert is that he reminds us of our own potential to self-justify, to be blind toward others. We don't all go around raping 12-year old girls, but we all do fail to see other people. This is one of the great things about the novel: It questions not just the greater world, and the politics of the moment, but you.

- Playboy, December 2005, p 158​

​

Peder

 

[Peder]

Right! Thats never happened!

Pontalba,
/big chuckle heard 'round the room/
Sorry,
Peder

 

[StillILearn]

As mentioned over on the other thread, I have finally been catching up with reading the Lolita Commemorative essays in the Christmas 2005 issue of Playboy. Here's a long excerpt from the essay by Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran.
[/RIGHT]
Peder

A beautiful segue, Peder, for when we do go on to read RLiT. (There are some people around here who are reading it now, I think.)

 

[Peder]

A beautiful segue, Peder, for when we do go on to read RLiT. (There are some people around here who are reading it now, I think.)

That, at least, is one I have read and must still be around here someplace!

 

[StillILearn]

In for a penny ...

I just went ahead and one clicked Pale Fire. I've been dancing all around it.

 

[Peder]

I just went ahead and one clicked Pale Fire. I've been dancing all around it.

Still,
Congratulations! That is certainly taking the plunge and you are in for a very strange book. Not that it can't be read. In one sense it can easily be read, in the other sense it is hard to know what to make of it. I do hope you read (and reread) the poem in the first half instead of being put off by it. It makes the book and I think it is great!
In fact, heresy, I can forget about the second half.
Peder

 

[Peder]

I think there are some Ada people here, so here is Donna Tartt, author of The Secret History, also writing in the Christmas 2005 Lolita Memorial issue of Playboy

I first read Lolita when I was 16, but I would have read it sooner had I been able to find it. In rural Mississsippi 25 years ago, it wasn't an easy book to come by....but I had read his collected short stories, and Ada, which was so indescribably wonderful to me that I couln't even comprehend it; the story was beyond me but the words and images were so beautiful that I could open it at any random point and drown in it. For over a year I checked it from the library, and hauled it around with me everywhere I went (and if anybody was ever amused to see a little girl always carrying around this enormous book that said Nabokov, they never said anything....

Donna Tartt - Playboy, Christmas 2005, p 160​

And that's it from Playboy,
at least for the moment,
Peder