Re: RARA-AVIS: RE : Lolita and noir

From: Patrick King ( abrasax93@yahoo.com)
Date: 26 Feb 2007


Kerry wrote: but if the author has one of his characters say "I thought Lolita was hilariously funny from beginning to end," do you believe the character, find the character is not credible or decide that the author is immoral?
********** I would suspect that the author was developing a character who would prove to be a sexual predator as the story progressed.

Patrick King
--- "Kerry J. Schooley" < gsp.schoo@murderoutthere.com> wrote:

> At 05:09 PM 25/02/2007, you wrote:
>
> >Well, Kerry, if you find yourself giggling to
> relieve
> >the tension as you read Nabakov's poetic reference
> to
> >a 14-year-old girl's vulva,
>
> You've applied the motivation here, not me. In fact,
> I'm not sure I
> said anything to imply why I might find Lolita
> full-tilt funny. You
> don't know me, and you cannot read my mind, yet you
> feel comfortable
> attributing a specific motivation to my statement.
>
> In reading fiction, the reader often has only the
> slimmest of
> evidence to determine the motivations of characters,
> narrators and
> even less for authors. This is particularly true in
> Hardboil and
> Noir, where there's a strong stylistic tendency to
> avoid internal
> dialogue and other character revealing techniques
> except dialogue and
> behaviour. Much is left to the reader, but if the
> author has one of
> his characters say "I thought Lolita was hilariously
> funny from
> beginning to end," do you believe the character,
> find the character
> is not credible or decide that the author is
> immoral?
>
> > I'd say the humor is more
> >in the reader than it is in the writing.
>
> That may be. I'm still inclined to think that in
> art, meaning is a
> collaboration between the author and the reader, and
> not always a
> successful one.
>
> > Just my
> >opinion.
>
> Well, that was my point to begin with.
>
> Best,
> Kerry
>
>
------------------------------------------------------
> Literary events Calendar (South Ont.)
> http://www.lit-electric.com
> The evil men do lives after them
> http://www.murderoutthere.com
>
------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>

 
____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a PS3 game guru. Get your game face on with the latest PS3 news and previews at Yahoo! Games. http://videogames.yahoo.com/platform?platform=120121



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 26 Feb 2007 EST