• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

More levity

To TIME (published in the 18 January 1971 issue)

Sir: I find highly objectionable the title of your piece "Profit Without Honor," ["Dec 21] on the musical adaptation of Lolita, as well as your sermonet on scruples thay I once happened to voice concerning its filming. When cast in the title role of Kubrick's neither very sinful nor very immoral picture, Miss Lyon was a well-chaperoned young lady, and I suspect that her Broadway succesor will be as old as she was at the time. Fourteen is not twelve, 1970 is not 1958, and the sum of $150,000 is not correct.

Vladimir Nabokov
Montreux, Switzerland
Click to expand...

...................
 
To: John Updike

January 7, 1971

Dear Mr Updike,

I was delighted to receive your charming note. As you know I love your prose; to get it in this personal form enhances the pleasure it gives me.

Vladimir Nabokov
Click to expand...


....................
 
"
steffee said:
I thought that too, lol! :D
What edition do you have?! My cover has only a flower on the front, and Dolly is spelled Daria in this one :)
Click to expand...
Steffe.
First Vintage Internation Edition, February 1990.
And you are right, it is Daria in mine too.

As for covers, I have previously noticed different covers for US and UK editions. I would suspect that our two amazons would show different book covers.

But, I'll tell ya'! Ya can dress that Dolly up, but ya can't take her out!
After one page she (or someone) had me giggling out loud in the coffee shop,
Demon's two-fold hobby was collecting old masters and young mistresses. he also liked middle-aged puns.
Click to expand...
After six more pages I almost bellowed out loud, after "the two young discoverers," boy and girl, had come across some startling revelations in an old family scrapbook in the attic,
"Now don't you think we should resume our shirts and shorts and go down, and bury or burn this album at once, girl. Right?'
"Right," answered Ada,"Destroy and forget. But we still have an hour before tea."
Click to expand...
A whole hour! What's the hurry? :rolleyes:
I still am laughing as I type those lines, now at home at my keyboard.

The back cover says "ADA, OR ARDOR, is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat." They'll get no argument from me!
[PS Steffe, you already know all that. I'm just putting it up to tease the others here beyond all endurance :D]

Peder
 
steffee said:
I thought that too, lol! :D
What edition do you have?! My cover has only a flower on the front, and Dolly is spelled Daria in this one :)
Click to expand...
You guys are bad, bad, bad!! j/k j/k :)
Leading me down the garden path again... well if you insist...:rolleyes:

My copy of Ada or Ardor has the girl stretching upwards apparently in a foggy, slightly sunlit field, pale green framing. Daria. /sigh/ But I'm finishing Vera first!!

coupons are a good thing. :p
 
Still,
"...and the sum is not correct...."
Been splitting my sides for a whole minute now!
For all its mirth, he must have rwitten Lolita when he was in a relatively serious frame of mind. ROTFALOLTIC
No wonder he reportedly could have a whole dinner table full of guests rolling in the aisles!
peder
 
Ada

To: Frank E. Taylor

April 1969

Dear Frank,

With your buxom Ada against my breast, my bathroom scale recons my weight at 88 1/2 kg.; without her at 87. What a splendid, enchaning, appetizing volume! Tolstoy says about his Anna K. that she carried her embonpoint gracefully." How Ada would have maddened Leo!

As I cabled you yesterday, I somehow overlooked -- probably in page proof -- a bothersome little misprint on the last page. My MS gives the correct "view descried" (not "decribed"). I wonder if this could be cured in ensuing copies? Webster's condemns "described" when used in the sense of "descried".

Inspsiration seems on the point of visiting me again despite my being so dreadfull drained after Ada.

Yours ever,
V
Vladimir Nabokov
Click to expand...
.................
 
Ada

Dear Frank,

I just got the photostat for the new jacket design for ADA, and do not like it at all. The lettering is dumpy, with apertures en cul-de-poule. The coloration for ADA recalls at first blush the nacrine inner layer of a dejected shellfish, and, at closer inspection, the bleak marblings of a ledger's edge. At six paces the D of the title looks like a badly deformed O. Please, let us go back to the joyful, elegant, black VN amd red ADA on the white ground!

I wrote you yesterday thanking you for the duplicate set. In the same letter I mentioned how I stand with the Atlantic.

We did not go to Rome after all to avoid being caught in strikes and riots.

Thanks for your good wishes. We wish you a marvelous year, too.

Cordial greetings,
V
Vladimir Nabokov
Click to expand...



.....................
 
Puns on titles of works by Henry Miller

January 14, 1969

Dear Frank,

I would not like to interfere in any way with your publicity plans. "Erotic masterpiece" sounds all right, though, as you are no doubt aware, it has been loosely applied in the recent past to books like Poxus and Capri Corn -- and also to my own Lolita. Prompted by your question, I have rapidly passed in review such epithets as "fantastic," "iridescent," "demonic," "mysterious," "magic," "glorious", and the like; but let me repeat, I entirely rely upon your good taste and experience.

Incidentally "Paris Match", whose reporter I had refused to receive, has retaliated with a spatter of nonsense about me (January 9, 1969) and an idiotic bit about Ada, but I don't think it needs shaking a stick at.

We shall be of course absolutely delighted to see you and your wife here. Even if you do not come do let me know where to get in touch with you while you are in Europe.

Yours ever,
Vladimir Nabokov
Click to expand...

..................
 
Telegram

To: Frank E Taylor

March 1969

LT
LOVELY FAT ADA BUT NOTHING IS PERFECT IN LIFE BAD MISPRINT IN PENULT LINE LAST PAGE OF BOOK VIEW DESCRIBED SHOULD BE DESCRIED.

NABOKOV

EXP VLADIMIR NABOKOV PALACE HOTEL MONTREAUX SWITZERLAND
Click to expand...



............................
 
Still, Steffee, Pontalba, et al
Well then it may not be entirely inappropriate to link to what our current American Ada looks like (if your pop-up blocker allows it).

Ada Front Cover

That's a subliminal appeal for the male vote here. :rolleyes:

peder
 
Peder said:
Still, Steffee, Pontalba, et al


Ada Front Cover

That's a subliminal appeal for the male vote here. :rolleyes:peder
Click to expand...

I suspect that (to Vladimir) this young woman would have qualified as a "lovely, fat Ada". You just have to look at the women he did fall for. :rolleyes: But maybe, after all, just a "buxom" Ada. :D
 
I like that cover. I can't find my cover online anywhere, and even tried to take a pic on my mobile but it doesn't do it justice... it's just a penguin classic cover, before they made them all modern, like this one
 
StillILearn said:
Peder = Still, I echo Steffee! YOU ARE MAGNIFICENT!

Just like Vera, all I do is type.

:)
Click to expand...

Still,

Just exactly like Vera, you do more than type and you are indispensable!

Fat Ada indeed! /shaking head at VN in incomprehension/

She looks slim in some places.

Peder
 
steffee said:
I like that cover. I can't find my cover online anywhere, and even tried to take a pic on my mobile but it doesn't do it justice... it's just a penguin classic cover, before they made them all modern, like this one
Click to expand...
Steffee,
Well, that definitely gets the idea across. :)
And PS that's what I like about amazon.eu. Their images are accessible separately from the entire page.
Peder
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top