Hi Patrick:
Coming out of lurkdom to point you to
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/nabokov/lo_excerpt.html
for Lolita's opening. If you don't see the humor in "(picnic,
lightning)", "and some interesting reactions on the part of
my organism to certain photographs, pearl and umbra, with
infinitely soft partings . . . " . . . actually, I was going
to quote more, but I find humor all over Humbert's voice. Do
you, a member of this listserv and a reader of hardboiled
fiction, not find something funny about a sentence like: "You
can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose
style"?
So much to say about Nabokov (and professors and grad
students have made careers saying it), but humorless he
ain't.
Bob V in NYC
PS: Pale Fire is my favorite, the most extraordinarily
constructed novel (I think it's a novel?!?) I've ever read.
Even the index has jokes and puzzles.
PPS: I wouldn't consider it noir or hardboiled either,
despite some notable elements.
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Patrick King
<abrasax93@...> wrote:
>
> Could you possibly quote some of the
especially
> hillarious passages you recall so I can understand
at
> least what you mean? I remember the Catcher In The
Rye
> chapter in church in which a former student
was
> speaking about the fine education he'd received
and
> Holden was commenting on the side as
causing
> unrestrainable laughter. I never had that sort
of
> experience with Lolita.
>
> Patrick King
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