Vladimir Nabokov: The Enchanter

[Peder]

Breaca That ending! Way different! POW! And somehow more satisfying.

My, you are being moderate this eveniing! I notice the smiley, but you sure have a dead-pan look that could fool me! 'Somehow' indeed!

but it was more of a dreamers plotting.

That is the best way to put it that I have seen yet! Arthur really does comes across as a cold-blooded predator, Humbert somehow less so. Although, there are times with Humbert also, when I would cheerfully wring his neck! Or use Little Chum on him.

Somehow I tend to doubt that Humbert would have ever done more than what was accomplished in the famous "couch scene" beginning on page 58 - 61 of Lolita. Since we know that the purple pills were in fact some sort of super vitamin, and not a sleeping pill as HH thought, they'd have been quite ineffectual.

OH WOW, WOE! Do you mean if Lolita hadn't ever facilitated things and been more resistant? That would be a far-reaching observation! But certainly a defensible position! Oh my! What has my little girl gotten herself into, now?! But he did clobber her once!
/perspiring/
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Peder
Do you think HH would have had the nerve to bring Lo to a hotel like that if Charlotte had been still above ground? After all that stuff about she would commit suicide if she found out he didn't believe in the Christian God? And all the screeching she did when she found the diary? Just imagine if she found out (and she would have) that HH and Lo were intimate. Lolita would not have been able to keep it to herself indefinitely............she'd have thrown it up in Charlotte's face during one of their fights. for sure!

 

[pontalba]

My, you are being moderate this eveniing! I notice the smiley, but you sure have a dead-pan look that could fool me! 'Somehow' indeed!

Ya got me!


Good Night All, I'm bushed.............well, I might read a little longer.......

 

[Peder]

Do you suppose thats why he didn't drive? Maybe that particular difficulty did not afflict Vera.

I'm only on p.49 though.

Pontalba,
Good question, but nah! I think it was part and parcel of his being 'lordly,' as their manner of unpacking the car will show later. (And which may really cause Still to finally throw the book against the wall and say, 'Now, this is too much!')
Hi, Still!
Peder

 

[Peder]

Peder
Do you think HH would have had the nerve to bring Lo to a hotel like that if Charlotte had been still above ground? After all that stuff about she would commit suicide if she found out he didn't believe in the Christian God? And all the screeching she did when she found the diary? Just imagine if she found out (and she would have) that HH and Lo were intimate. Lolita would not have been able to keep it to herself indefinitely............she'd have thrown it up in Charlotte's face during one of their fights. for sure!

Pontalba,
Oh, you are convincing me more and more that Little Lo's 'flirting' had far-reaching consequences! And no, I don't think he would have had the nerve. Unless he were a complete and stupid idiot! And, yes, she would have found out. That kind of news wouldn't stay secret! And if she was half as perceptive as you are, she would have 'known' without anyone saying anything. Lo did 'glow' ya' remember?!
Pontalba, you sure know how to read a book, and the characters in it! I shouldn't even try. Just ask you to explain it to me! (With pictures.) I am truly very impressed!
Honestly,
Peder

 

[Peder]

G'night, Gracie!

 

[Peder]

Oh, and an overdue BTW Pontalba

Peder P.80 Lolita:

Great catch -- connecting the musings of the two perps about the opportunities afforded by having the mother in the hospital!

Just goes to show that 'When the cat's away, the rat will play!' or something like that.

So, what will the new day bring?
Peder

 

[pontalba]

[Pontalba, you sure know how to read a book, and the characters in it! I shouldn't even try. Just ask you to explain it to me! (With pictures.) I am truly very impressed!
Honestly,
Peder

Oh Horse Hockey!

You remember how HH was always saying something about how timid he was? In spite of his 'manly looks'? Now Arthur, is timid as well, but he is sneakier than HH (I think). Now I wonder what HH's reaction would have been if Lolita had had the same reaction as the girl in TE?
Thats what I was trying to get to in the other discussion, Lo's flirting and neediness was the lynch pin.
The girl in TE was well looked after by the friend, if not the acutal mother. So there was a surrogate parent in place already. At least this mother saw that the child was looked after by people she knew.

Now as far as VN being 'lordly', I don't doubt you for a moment in that estimation. However. Do you think his 'lordliness' attitude could have been partially to cover up an unacknowledged weakness? Haven't gotten that far yet, just wondering.

 

[StillILearn]

Pontalba, StillILearn,In rereading those pages my respect for Stacy Shiff as an author went up as my respect for VN went down. She has quite a few humorous comments along the way -- sardonic may be the word. Like the relevance of Gogol's advice for VN's correspondence with Vera while hiding his affair, "Leave out only the important parts." For some reason I regard that as wildly hilarious. And she has some other insightful one-liners as well. Which must be why the book is easy to read. She has the right blend of impartial accuracy and human appreciation for the foibles of her subject(s).
peder

I'm very much enjoying the Stacy Schiff book. I feel awkward carrying on about it here in The Enchanter thread, but if you all don't mind, then I will. I actually feel as if I'm getting to know both the Nabokovs pretty darned well, and although I'm glad I read Lolita before I read this biography, I now think it might add to my enjoyment of VN's other books. Or should I say their other books? I suspect they came to a point wherein they couldn't tell where the one began and the other left off!

At one point VN was tempted to write about the sex life of "Siamese twins", and Vera (wisely) vetoed the idea. Too autobiographical for her, probably.

 

[Peder]

Now as far as VN being 'lordly', I don't doubt you for a moment in that estimation. However. Do you think his 'lordliness' attitude could have been partially to cover up an unacknowledged weakness? Haven't gotten that far yet, just wondering.

Pontalba,
Well, who knows what a Freudian would say (about VN of all people )?

But the cases where I have seen that kind of man-woman relation have pretty clearly been part of the tradition and subculture that they live in. And it is accepted by both parties as 'the way it is.' Nabokov is not from that subculture, but I wonder whether that is the way it might have been in the millionnaire Russian families (among whom he grew up) before their Revolution and before he came west. I don't know.

As for horse hockey. OK, I will confess to bing able to understand some things on my own, but when you get it right, you get it right and you absolutely blow me away. So, compliments will continue!

Peder

 

[Peder]

I'm very much enjoying the Stacy Schiff book. I feel awkward carrying on about it here in The Enchanter thread, but if you all don't mind, then I will. I actually feel as if I'm getting to know both the Nabokovs pretty darned well, and although I'm glad I read Lolita before I read this biography, I now think it might add to my enjoyment of VN's other books. Or should I say their other books? I suspect they came to a point wherein they couldn't tell where the one began and the other left off!

At one point VN was tempted to write about the sex life of "Siamese twins", and Vera (wisely) vetoed the idea. Too autobiographical for her, probably.

Still,
ROTFALOLTIC! 'Too autobiographical.' Priceless Still, priceless! That sounds just like him, and if he wasn't joking he should have been, just to get a rise out of her! Like thinking of bringing a young female model to the publisher's reception, also.

But, yes, there came to be no boundary between V&V. It was a single unit.

As far as talking about Vera here. Why not? IMO. Any other preferences? I'm very glad you are, for insights that I clearly missed.

Peder

 

[Peder]

As for Arthur himself - I found he came across as far more predatorial than HH.

Breaca, et al,That is exactly the one nub of the matter that I see as creating a very basic difference between the two stories. Sure, they are both pedophiles; and sure, they are both going after a twelve-year-old girl; and sure they both marry the mother as a means to their end. The stories might indeed both be summarized as 'pedeophile marries mother to get at girl,' but the differences in emotional content between the corresponding characters is so different that it makes them completely different stories in my mind, in addition to the detailed events also being different. If one ignores the inner emotion of the characters in assessing a story, then one might just as well call Crime and Punishment an ordinary detective story.

The other nub of the matter is the total difference between the two girls and what that means for the stories, which we haven't really gone into here yet.

So apart from the pedophiles being different, and the two girls being different, and the detailed events being different, (and the scale of the stories and the writing styles obviously being different) everything else is the same. Oh pshaw! (On that reviewer, not on you. )

Peder

 

[StillILearn]

Accidentally netted this; thought I'd pin it to the board:

The Enchanter
(1939, 1986) A humbler Humbert chasing after a lowlier Lo.

 

[pontalba]

StillI great quote! But if she was lowlier, she certainly came out ahead of the game.....

I don't see why we cannot keep on talking about Vera, after all she is literally a part of the fabric of VN, V/VN as it were.
I love the way Schiff brings out that Vera is the basis in one way or the other for some of the characters in VN's novels. What better a person to pattern his characters? I have to go back and mark in which book, which character so when I read that book I can go back and compare.

Peder I believe that Vladimer was somewhat raised in the 'women will be subservient', well maybe not subservient, but at the beck and call of the husband at any rate. She accepted that partially because she felt it was her calling to foster and protect him and his work, and yes guide it as well. He would not have been what he was without her.

 

[Peder]

Accidentally netted this; thought I'd pin it to the board:

Cute quote. Driven by names more than content, eh?

If they had been Charles and Francine, then perhaps:

A churlier Charles chasing a frumpier Francine.

A ruder Robert chasing a dizzier Daisy.

An edgier Edward chasing a wanton Wendy.

A wilier Wiliam chasing a hellish Helene.

A frigid Frederick chasing a smoldering Sarah.

A smoldering Samuel chasing a frigid Frieda.

This is fun!

Peder

 

[Peder]

Peder I believe that Vladimer was somewhat raised in the 'women will be subservient', well maybe not subservient, but at the beck and call of the husband at any rate. She accepted that partially because she felt it was her calling to foster and protect him and his work, and yes guide it as well. He would not have been what he was without her.

Pontalba,Re women's 'proper' place it seems he carried it further than I have generally seen it among people of that generation. But, certainly no changing diapers for him (I don't think).
Re calling, that is probably a good word for her attitude. It seems that as long as she had chosen the job she was going to give it her all and produce the best she could. No shirking for her. And she certainly gave him whatever was within her power to provide to have him be the genius he could be. I don't think that overstates it. She could be pardoned for believing that he was her work of art, although I have no hint that she ever thought of it that way. He was a blessed man in having her. And somehow I think he got his appreciation across,.... even if she did have to carry all the luggage! Just look at them playing chess together on the cover!

peder

 

[Breaca]

Breaca What page is the sister mentioned? I don't remember him mentioning any relations at all......

Just a fleeting visit...

Page 65 '.... for some reason it evoked a fleeting memory of something infinitely remote, late bedtimes in his childhood, a dissolving lamp, the hair of his sister, his coeval, who had died long, long ago. "My sweetheart," he repeated.....

Mmm Annabel?

 

[Peder]

I've been pondering how to find a pair of scenes that would capture the differences we think we see between Arthur and Humbert and also show the differences in plot tructure. The following are the first two that come to mind, and while I think they are not perfect, I'll offer them anyway.

Waking up the next morning, after catching sight of the girl, Arthur is berating himself for not pursuing the situation more opportunistically.

"..why didn't you try to get a conversation going.. with that governess? He knew he was not very sociable, but also that he was resourceful, persisitent, and capable of ingratiating himself; more than once in other areas of his life he had had to improvise a tone or apply himself tenaciously, undismayed that his immediate target was only indirectly related to his more remote goal."

That is Arthur the schemer on the eve of his quest, with his mind on the goal.

OTOH, Humbert arrives at the Haze house looking for a room and is being shown the upstairs,

"But there was no question of my settling there. I could not be happy in that type of household with bedraggled magazines on every chair and a kind of horriible hybridization between the comedy of so-called 'functional modern furniture' and the tragedy of decrepit rockers and rickety lamp tables with dead lamps.....Let's get out of here at once, I firmly said to myself as I pretended to deliberate over the absurdly, and ominously, low price that my wistful hostess was asking for bed and board.
Old world politeness, however, obliged me to go on with the ordeal."

Pretty soon he will see Lo and everything will change, but for the moment he is being nice and going through the motions, even though his mind is made up and he has no reason to continue with the tour.

In further scenes we get to see Arthur's calculating side on display, while we get to see more of Humbert's sociable side. Pifer, from the Casebook, would no doubt point out that Nabokov is using different ways to 'persuade' us how we should view the two men.

And, incidentally, in those two scenes we also see the more elaborated writng style of Lolita that is absent from the direct prose of the Enchanter.

Peder

 

[Peder]

Just a fleeting visit...

Page 65 '.... for some reason it evoked a fleeting memory of something infinitely remote, late bedtimes in his childhood, a dissolving lamp, the hair of his sister, his coeval, who had died long, long ago. "My sweetheart," he repeated.....

Mmm Annabel?

Breaca,
Yes! His own Annabel it would seem! Hidden deep. Both men seem to be haunted by memories of happiness taken from them, both through death, that they are trying to recover. Remembrance of Lost Time? did I hear anyone say, asks Proust in a muffled voice from offstage

Peder

 

[pontalba]

Just a fleeting visit...

Page 65 '.... for some reason it evoked a fleeting memory of something infinitely remote, late bedtimes in his childhood, a dissolving lamp, the hair of his sister, his coeval, who had died long, long ago. "My sweetheart," he repeated.....

Mmm Annabel?

I missed that completely!! And that is a real key to his behavior. Possibly the basic reason for his predilection.

Annabel? Yes, I would think so. Again, I am amazed at VN's ability to convey an entire lifetime of meaning is a few lines!

Great Catch Breaca!