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Friday, December 11, 2009
Gilgamesh
As I was going though Speak, Memory when writing my final paper, I came across an interesting quote, something that I had missed before. "To fix correctly, in terms of time, some of my child hood recollections, I have to go by comets and eclipses, as historians do when they tackle the fragments of a saga." (p 25) It appears that Nabokov is trying to compare his life with that of Gilgamesh. The Epic of Gilgamesh has never been found in its entirty, only portions have been unearthed the others being lost to the reveges of time. Since the author was so inconciderate as to not put his name or even a date of composition, historians must use the text itself, most notibly the great flood scene but also references to astrological events, to place the date of the writing. Yes, indeed, Nabokov was either cocky or crazy, probably both.
Final Paper - I've Finally Gone Crazy
In his books, Vladimir Nabokov plays with puns, pranks, and false memories in an attempt to drive his audience crazy. In his novel, Lolita, and again in Pale Fire, Nabokov gives the reader only one perspective from which to view events. For this reason, the reader must believe what the narrator is telling him or her or else one cannot even begin to read the book. But when the narrator is obviously insane, as in the case of Humbert Humbert, or simply crazy, such as Charles Kinbote, the reader is lead down a twisting bath of questions, from which there is no return. Nabokov may also have played with this idea in his own autobiography, for there are several stories within Speak, Memory which may border on the fuzzier side of authenticity.
Lolita, told entirely from the perspective of a pedophile, Humbert Humbert, is a prime example of reader having to trust fiction. The only way that the reader can know the characters is through the narrator. Since the narrator is a pedophile fixated on a young girl, the question is raised: Can the reader actually trust his descriptions of people and events? This question becomes even more complicated when the question of Humbert’s sanity is raised. If Humbert is truly sane, and understands the monstrosity of his actions, one may assume that he is not depicting events correctly, but could be if he wanted to. On the flip side, if Humbert is possibly insane, perhaps his take on reality, however skewed, is what he is truly experiencing. This view, in fact, negates the perspectives of the other characters, since Humbert’s reality, then, would be the only reality.
The reader, however, has no other point of reference from which to view the story. The reader is, in fact, a crucial part to the story. Humbert spells it out when he says, “Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me.” (p 129) One is inexorably pulled into Humbert’s world and led to sympathize with him because of the singular perspective presented in the work. If the reader does not sympathize with Humbert and trust his story, then there is little use in reading the story. The reader will inevitably be caught up in a web of nonsense, unable to proceed in the story for being mired by irrelevant questions: Is Humbert sane? Can his perspective be trusted? Was Lolita really leading him on, or was it all part of a grand delusion?
One more thought is brought up when thinking about Lolita. Since Humbert is the main character in the book, that makes him the protagonist. Since protagonist is generally associated with a proponent or champion of a cause, the lines of realty become further blurred as the reader must condone (rather than oppose) the illicit actions of Humbert in order to continue to read the book. However, a closer look at the etymology of protagonist reveals that it is derived from combining the Greek words prot-, meaning competitor, and -agon, meaning agony. In other words, Humbert is playing games in agony, a fitting pastime for this particular protagonist.
This question of reality can also be brought to bear on Pale Fire. The insanity of Charles Kinbote is easily revealed within the first few paragraphs of his commentary. However, questions have been raised as to the true nature of that commentary and the commentator. Some people have speculated that Nabokov’s idea behind the commentary was that it was actually written by John Shade, making it look like another person, slightly insane, wrote it. This, of course, would make John Shade insane himself. There is some support to the idea that Nabokov intended Shade to be insane. Of all the characters depicted through the eyes of Kinbote, Shade is the only sane one. If a mad man was writing a commentary made to look like the work of another commenting on a poem written by said mad man, it may make sense, if that mad man were thinking coherently, to draw attention away from his own insanity by surrounding himself with greater insane characters than himself. This theory does require the insane man to think in a somewhat linear path, which may, in itself, negate the insanity theory.
Again, as in Lolita, the only perspective giving in Pale Fire is Kinbote’s. To avoid going insane the reader has to trust that the commentator is Kinbote. But how far can the reader trust past that? Like Humbert, Kinbote may have a propensity to skew events to his own liking. It is a bit more obvious in Pale Fire that Kinbote does have a stranger version of reality. When reading his commentary on the poem, that, at least, should become blatantly clear to the reader. Unlike Lolita, however, the reader is expected to notice the discrepancies between the poem (reality) and the commentary (Kinbote’s insanity). Pale Fire is, in actuality, a mystery novel, and the mystery that the reader must solve is reality, what is really real.
Nabokov seemed to love mysteries and crossing the line between sane and crazy in his novels. There is an element of Sherlock Holmes, little clues, dropped, like carefully selected pebbles, into the pool of consciousness of the reader. There is also a blurring between realities, of which the reader may not be able to trust any. So did these penchants, perchance, cross over into his autobiography?
Speak, Memory does not have the same flavor of mystery or insanity found in the other two works. But Nabokov does imbue the book with a feeling that he is certainly not revealing all, and what he does reveal may not be entirely trusted. The opening paragraph of the book is written as if it were a study of another person, although he is talking about himself. In the same chapter Nabokov tells his reader that the chronology of his childhood memories may not be trusted either, as he compares his story to that of Gilgamesh which can only be dated by the movement of the comets and eclipses (p 25). Certainly, a narrator who compares his life story with the Epic of Gilgamesh cannot be thought to be completely sane, or perhaps he is just really arrogant.
There is also the fact that even in autobiographies the narrator can be an unreliable one. Facts brought from memory and pertaining to childhood exploits are not only unverifiable but admittedly fallible. Nabokov, himself, admits in his book to not trusting some memories and at other times having false memories. Despite being an autobiography the narrator can no more be trusted than the narrator of Pale Fire. In fact, it may seem to the careful reader that Nabokov goes out of his way to throw true and false memories together with equal propensity.
There is, within his memories of his tutors, a scene in which during a slide show several of the young boys make shadow puppets during a brief interlude. Nabokov tells of a flexible boy who was able to silhouette his foot and adds, for the reader’s benefit, “could it be I after all – the Hyde of my Jekyll?” This only serves to make the reader doubt the dependability of the narrator. If it was his foot, he should have said that it was his foot. Is anything that he tells the reader to be trusted?
Of course some things can be verified; living accommodations, important events occurring in the world, recorded events in Nabokov’s life, and family and friends near to him. But beyond those few things, Nabokov’s memories seem to run away with him and the reader. There is, for instance, a passage in chapter 3 in which Nabokov’s uncle creates a cipher, that when solved should spell out “To be or not to be”. The problem with the problem is that it is not a true cipher with a distinguishable logarithm, but rather seems to be random numbers assigned to specific letters. In other words, each letter represented has a distinct number, for example 13 for “o”, but there is no way to know what numbers unrepresented letters, such as “p”, correspond to. Is this just a fault in the memory of Nabokov, or did he make up the mathematical abilities of his uncle? Further confounding the reader, Nabokov gives no solution to the cipher that he created, leaving the reader continually in doubt as to the true message (although the line from Hamlet does seem to fit the criteria better than any other line).
Eventually, however, the reader will go insane trying to unravel the mysteries of Vladimir Nabokov and his books. Nabokov took great care to weave deliberate puns, pranks, and red herrings into his works. Every reading will bring new connections to light, and as the reader tries to solve all the puzzles and mysteries, and make all the connections, it will only lead him crazy.
Bibliography
Boyle, Robert. “An Absence Of Wood Nymphs.” SI Vault. A CNN Network Site. 14 Sep. 1959. Web. 3 Sep. 2009.
Fogarty, Robert. “In Search of Memory.” Art Publications. bNet. 2003. Web. 3 Sep. 2009.
Grayson, Jane. Vladimir Nabokov. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2002. Print
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita. 1955. Ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. New York: Vintage Books. 1991. Print.
------. Pale Fire. New York: Random House, Inc. 1962. Print.
------. Speak, Memory. New York: Vintage International. 1967. Print.
------. “Transparent Things.” Nabokov: Novels 1969-1974. Ed. Brian Boyd. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1996. 487-562. Print.
Vickers, Graham. Chasing Lolita: How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov's Little Girl All Over Again. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2008. Print.
A Dictionary of the Underworld. 1949. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd. 1961. Print.
Lolita, told entirely from the perspective of a pedophile, Humbert Humbert, is a prime example of reader having to trust fiction. The only way that the reader can know the characters is through the narrator. Since the narrator is a pedophile fixated on a young girl, the question is raised: Can the reader actually trust his descriptions of people and events? This question becomes even more complicated when the question of Humbert’s sanity is raised. If Humbert is truly sane, and understands the monstrosity of his actions, one may assume that he is not depicting events correctly, but could be if he wanted to. On the flip side, if Humbert is possibly insane, perhaps his take on reality, however skewed, is what he is truly experiencing. This view, in fact, negates the perspectives of the other characters, since Humbert’s reality, then, would be the only reality.
The reader, however, has no other point of reference from which to view the story. The reader is, in fact, a crucial part to the story. Humbert spells it out when he says, “Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me.” (p 129) One is inexorably pulled into Humbert’s world and led to sympathize with him because of the singular perspective presented in the work. If the reader does not sympathize with Humbert and trust his story, then there is little use in reading the story. The reader will inevitably be caught up in a web of nonsense, unable to proceed in the story for being mired by irrelevant questions: Is Humbert sane? Can his perspective be trusted? Was Lolita really leading him on, or was it all part of a grand delusion?
One more thought is brought up when thinking about Lolita. Since Humbert is the main character in the book, that makes him the protagonist. Since protagonist is generally associated with a proponent or champion of a cause, the lines of realty become further blurred as the reader must condone (rather than oppose) the illicit actions of Humbert in order to continue to read the book. However, a closer look at the etymology of protagonist reveals that it is derived from combining the Greek words prot-, meaning competitor, and -agon, meaning agony. In other words, Humbert is playing games in agony, a fitting pastime for this particular protagonist.
This question of reality can also be brought to bear on Pale Fire. The insanity of Charles Kinbote is easily revealed within the first few paragraphs of his commentary. However, questions have been raised as to the true nature of that commentary and the commentator. Some people have speculated that Nabokov’s idea behind the commentary was that it was actually written by John Shade, making it look like another person, slightly insane, wrote it. This, of course, would make John Shade insane himself. There is some support to the idea that Nabokov intended Shade to be insane. Of all the characters depicted through the eyes of Kinbote, Shade is the only sane one. If a mad man was writing a commentary made to look like the work of another commenting on a poem written by said mad man, it may make sense, if that mad man were thinking coherently, to draw attention away from his own insanity by surrounding himself with greater insane characters than himself. This theory does require the insane man to think in a somewhat linear path, which may, in itself, negate the insanity theory.
Again, as in Lolita, the only perspective giving in Pale Fire is Kinbote’s. To avoid going insane the reader has to trust that the commentator is Kinbote. But how far can the reader trust past that? Like Humbert, Kinbote may have a propensity to skew events to his own liking. It is a bit more obvious in Pale Fire that Kinbote does have a stranger version of reality. When reading his commentary on the poem, that, at least, should become blatantly clear to the reader. Unlike Lolita, however, the reader is expected to notice the discrepancies between the poem (reality) and the commentary (Kinbote’s insanity). Pale Fire is, in actuality, a mystery novel, and the mystery that the reader must solve is reality, what is really real.
Nabokov seemed to love mysteries and crossing the line between sane and crazy in his novels. There is an element of Sherlock Holmes, little clues, dropped, like carefully selected pebbles, into the pool of consciousness of the reader. There is also a blurring between realities, of which the reader may not be able to trust any. So did these penchants, perchance, cross over into his autobiography?
Speak, Memory does not have the same flavor of mystery or insanity found in the other two works. But Nabokov does imbue the book with a feeling that he is certainly not revealing all, and what he does reveal may not be entirely trusted. The opening paragraph of the book is written as if it were a study of another person, although he is talking about himself. In the same chapter Nabokov tells his reader that the chronology of his childhood memories may not be trusted either, as he compares his story to that of Gilgamesh which can only be dated by the movement of the comets and eclipses (p 25). Certainly, a narrator who compares his life story with the Epic of Gilgamesh cannot be thought to be completely sane, or perhaps he is just really arrogant.
There is also the fact that even in autobiographies the narrator can be an unreliable one. Facts brought from memory and pertaining to childhood exploits are not only unverifiable but admittedly fallible. Nabokov, himself, admits in his book to not trusting some memories and at other times having false memories. Despite being an autobiography the narrator can no more be trusted than the narrator of Pale Fire. In fact, it may seem to the careful reader that Nabokov goes out of his way to throw true and false memories together with equal propensity.
There is, within his memories of his tutors, a scene in which during a slide show several of the young boys make shadow puppets during a brief interlude. Nabokov tells of a flexible boy who was able to silhouette his foot and adds, for the reader’s benefit, “could it be I after all – the Hyde of my Jekyll?” This only serves to make the reader doubt the dependability of the narrator. If it was his foot, he should have said that it was his foot. Is anything that he tells the reader to be trusted?
Of course some things can be verified; living accommodations, important events occurring in the world, recorded events in Nabokov’s life, and family and friends near to him. But beyond those few things, Nabokov’s memories seem to run away with him and the reader. There is, for instance, a passage in chapter 3 in which Nabokov’s uncle creates a cipher, that when solved should spell out “To be or not to be”. The problem with the problem is that it is not a true cipher with a distinguishable logarithm, but rather seems to be random numbers assigned to specific letters. In other words, each letter represented has a distinct number, for example 13 for “o”, but there is no way to know what numbers unrepresented letters, such as “p”, correspond to. Is this just a fault in the memory of Nabokov, or did he make up the mathematical abilities of his uncle? Further confounding the reader, Nabokov gives no solution to the cipher that he created, leaving the reader continually in doubt as to the true message (although the line from Hamlet does seem to fit the criteria better than any other line).
Eventually, however, the reader will go insane trying to unravel the mysteries of Vladimir Nabokov and his books. Nabokov took great care to weave deliberate puns, pranks, and red herrings into his works. Every reading will bring new connections to light, and as the reader tries to solve all the puzzles and mysteries, and make all the connections, it will only lead him crazy.
Bibliography
Boyle, Robert. “An Absence Of Wood Nymphs.” SI Vault. A CNN Network Site. 14 Sep. 1959. Web. 3 Sep. 2009.
Fogarty, Robert. “In Search of Memory.” Art Publications. bNet. 2003. Web. 3 Sep. 2009.
Grayson, Jane. Vladimir Nabokov. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2002. Print
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita. 1955. Ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. New York: Vintage Books. 1991. Print.
------. Pale Fire. New York: Random House, Inc. 1962. Print.
------. Speak, Memory. New York: Vintage International. 1967. Print.
------. “Transparent Things.” Nabokov: Novels 1969-1974. Ed. Brian Boyd. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1996. 487-562. Print.
Vickers, Graham. Chasing Lolita: How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov's Little Girl All Over Again. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2008. Print.
A Dictionary of the Underworld. 1949. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd. 1961. Print.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
yellow blue tibia
Yellow Blue Tibia.............
Errr, what?
I have no idea.
Isn't Google a wonderful tool? What do you get?
"Yellow Blue Tibia"...It's a book, but nobody seems to get that the title comes from an innocuous little phrase in Transparent Things. It sounds like War of the Worlds--no, scratch that, it sounds like the aftermath of WotW - when WotW aired for the first time in 1938, people actually thought that the events of the radio play were actually happening. In Yellow Blue Tibia writers are brought together first in WWII and again during the Cold War to create an alien menace to bring the people of Russia together for a common threat, like WotW, only on purpose.
At least I'll now know what to say if I find a boyfriend in Russia. Yellowbluetibia!
Adrienne Martini reviews Adam Roberts
Two Views: Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
Errr, what?
I have no idea.
Isn't Google a wonderful tool? What do you get?
"Yellow Blue Tibia"...It's a book, but nobody seems to get that the title comes from an innocuous little phrase in Transparent Things. It sounds like War of the Worlds--no, scratch that, it sounds like the aftermath of WotW - when WotW aired for the first time in 1938, people actually thought that the events of the radio play were actually happening. In Yellow Blue Tibia writers are brought together first in WWII and again during the Cold War to create an alien menace to bring the people of Russia together for a common threat, like WotW, only on purpose.
At least I'll now know what to say if I find a boyfriend in Russia. Yellowbluetibia!
Adrienne Martini reviews Adam Roberts
Two Views: Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
Thursday, November 5, 2009
A mirrorless existence
We've been looking as Pale Fire as Kinbote's creation of a mirror image of his reality. But there may be another way to look at it, too, as a man unable to see himself. For example, the one physical feature that makes us individuals is also the one thing we can not see ourselves, our face. I remember a tale (but I can't think of title at the moment) about a family living without a mirror. Everyday they would help each other dress and brush their hair and everything that we generally do in front of a mirror. One day they finally did get a mirror, but to their horror they looked nothing like what they thought they would. They were so upset by their reflections that they immediately threw the mirror out, and went on, happily unaware of of their features, except what they imagined themselves to look like.
Isn't that what Kinbote is doing? He can't see himself, so me makes up a whole new person; or perhaps he did see himself at one time, and was so upset by it, that he created a new, imaginary image.
------------------------------------------------
On a side note: I think I'm going to write my paper topic on the one point perspective. In both Lolita and Pale Fire the reader has no choice but to trust and believe HH and Kinbote (respectively) because that is the only lens through which events are seen. The reader can't choose not to believe the point of perspective because then there would be no point reading them in the first place.
Isn't that what Kinbote is doing? He can't see himself, so me makes up a whole new person; or perhaps he did see himself at one time, and was so upset by it, that he created a new, imaginary image.
------------------------------------------------
On a side note: I think I'm going to write my paper topic on the one point perspective. In both Lolita and Pale Fire the reader has no choice but to trust and believe HH and Kinbote (respectively) because that is the only lens through which events are seen. The reader can't choose not to believe the point of perspective because then there would be no point reading them in the first place.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Possible sighting of John Shade
A face even a mother would be hard pressed to love.
http://giddybloom.blogspot.com/2007/05/nose-job-technology.html
Apparently, this man needed reconstructive surgery on his nose, and in order to do it they used some skin from his forehead.
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Also, Blogger reset all the names of the blogs in my blog list. I had had everyone's blog listed by their name rather than their blog title, and now it's all messed up! >:(
http://giddybloom.blogspot.com/2007/05/nose-job-technology.html
Apparently, this man needed reconstructive surgery on his nose, and in order to do it they used some skin from his forehead.
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Also, Blogger reset all the names of the blogs in my blog list. I had had everyone's blog listed by their name rather than their blog title, and now it's all messed up! >:(
Sunday, October 25, 2009
I take it back - See 2 posts down
It appears to be a problem with the Blogger server. Some outages are causing the blogs to be unable to read the updates from other sites. It's intermittent, which is why some blogs are updating, while others are still left lower in the queue.
Discovery
One page 192, Shade actually predicts his unfinished poem! In his posthumously published poem, "The Nature of Electricity" Shade writes about the nine-hundred-ninety-ninth lamp post and an old friend. The poem Pale Fire is 999 lines long and the last four are:
"And through the flowing shade and ebbing lightThe hi-lighted words create the setting for John Shades death! Shade walks through the encroaching dusk. He sees a butterfly (but true to dead Aunt Maud's warning [p. 188], does not heed it). The gardener is present (although we don't know his name. We do, however, know that Kinbote had a crush on him [p. 290-292]). The gardener does not, in fact, have a wheelbarrow, but instead a trowel with which he disarms Gradus. However, it may be important to note that one of the definitions of barrow is also a grave or burial site.
A man, unheedful of the butterfly--
Some neighbor's gardener, I guess--goes by
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane."
Friday, October 23, 2009
OMG! It's working again!
I can see the newest posts that people have made now! Yay, for what ever happened! :D
Monday, October 19, 2009
This is a test
I'm not sure, but I don't think that the blogs are updating properly on my blog. Has anybody noticed this? I'm posting this to see if it bumps my blog up in the list, which hasn't changed in 4 days, and doesn't display a snippet of my latest post.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Royal Game of the Goose
Oh, cool! A website dedicated to Nabokov, named Zembla!
How to know when to read the forward
I want to say, first off, that had I not read the library's copy of Lolita first I would not have read the forward to Pale Fire. I am a a creature of habit and like constancy, so when I saw that Lolita, or what one would think was the first page, did not start at 1 but at 6 I realized that the forward was in actuality part of the story, as normally forwards, prefaces, and the like are counted with tiny Roman numerals. It is harder to tell on our copies (if you have one from the bookstore) because the copy editor numbered each page after the cover, highly irregular, so the story (counting forward) starts at page 13, go figure.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Two Page Paper
Here's a paper written on only one letter!
Camp Q was of some fascination to me in Lolita. Usually, summer camps have long flowery, flowing, frequently formidable names like Quinipet or Quinebarge or Quidnunc. Lolita’s camp is identified only as Q. Nabokov must have had a reason to give such a short name to this camp. Admittedly, the camp plays only a minor role in an otherwise clue filled book, but it is interesting to look at, never the less.
The camp is first introduced in Chapter 14, although the name is withheld. This also happens to be the same chapter in which Humbert hears Quilty’s name for the first time (he feigned a toothache at the thought of being deprived of his lust object). This is not merely an unplanned coincidence, this is the first clue that the camp and Lolita’s exile to that camp is of some importance. The following chapter, in which the camp is named, also contains Charlotte’s love letter (if it can be called that), which induces Humbert’s devious plan of marriage to Mrs. Haze if only for access to Lolita. The camp is obviously the beginning of the end for H.H.
Having such a short name, the camp seems to beg the reader to uncover its clue(s). Chapter 27 tells the reader that each cabin in the camp is dedicated to a Disney character, but, other than a few fairy queens, “Q” does not seem to reference anything about Disney. The idea about fairy queens is in keeping with the enchanted, mythological aspect of the book, but it is a meager correlation in a book full of strong relationships.
For more promising clues, the sound of “q” (incidentally, probably a dark shade of red in Nabokov’s synesthesia, which is in keeping with the red theme through the rest of the book) can be analyzed. Q or cue or queue bears many connotations that are significant to Lolita. “Q” is a nickname for Clare Quilty. “Cue” is a signal to begin: The beginning of Humbert’s flight across America with Lolita. “Queue” can be an order or sequence of events: The camp was one step closer for Humbert to get what he wanted, Lolita to himself, and ultimately to loose everything.
Nabokov rarely makes coincidences and clues so obvious, however. To dig deeper, slang is another aspect of language that he is proficient with. In A Dictionary of the Underworld one can actually find that Q by itself is slang. Referring to the cue (also Quilty's nickname) ball in a game of billiards and coined sometime in the late 19th century, Q means the initiation of a deception. Humbert initiates several deceptions throughout Lolita. With the Farlows, he intimates that he is the biological father (through an old affair) to Lolita. He hides the death of Charlotte from Lolita, saying she is just convalescing at a fictitious hospital. He plays a deception every evening at each hotel they stay at along their route. And the greatest deception of all is the one that Humbert plays on the reader. Since we can never know what actually happens except through Humbert’s eyes, we are compelled to sympathize with a pedophile and murderer; we are tricked into helping Nabokov create Humbert. “Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not try to imagine me…” (p 129)
One other “q” word comes up when looking through slang dictionaries. “Quail” is slang for an attractive young woman. As a summer camp for girls, this could be an appropriate name for Camp Q, although it seems as weak as the Disney connection.
Nabokov obviously intended the reader to give Camp Q more than just a passing thought. The clues which are imbedded in the connotations of just the letter Q are numerous and deep. From the innocuous fairy queens to the ominous deceptions, Camp Q should not be passed over lightly.
Camp Q was of some fascination to me in Lolita. Usually, summer camps have long flowery, flowing, frequently formidable names like Quinipet or Quinebarge or Quidnunc. Lolita’s camp is identified only as Q. Nabokov must have had a reason to give such a short name to this camp. Admittedly, the camp plays only a minor role in an otherwise clue filled book, but it is interesting to look at, never the less.
The camp is first introduced in Chapter 14, although the name is withheld. This also happens to be the same chapter in which Humbert hears Quilty’s name for the first time (he feigned a toothache at the thought of being deprived of his lust object). This is not merely an unplanned coincidence, this is the first clue that the camp and Lolita’s exile to that camp is of some importance. The following chapter, in which the camp is named, also contains Charlotte’s love letter (if it can be called that), which induces Humbert’s devious plan of marriage to Mrs. Haze if only for access to Lolita. The camp is obviously the beginning of the end for H.H.
Having such a short name, the camp seems to beg the reader to uncover its clue(s). Chapter 27 tells the reader that each cabin in the camp is dedicated to a Disney character, but, other than a few fairy queens, “Q” does not seem to reference anything about Disney. The idea about fairy queens is in keeping with the enchanted, mythological aspect of the book, but it is a meager correlation in a book full of strong relationships.
For more promising clues, the sound of “q” (incidentally, probably a dark shade of red in Nabokov’s synesthesia, which is in keeping with the red theme through the rest of the book) can be analyzed. Q or cue or queue bears many connotations that are significant to Lolita. “Q” is a nickname for Clare Quilty. “Cue” is a signal to begin: The beginning of Humbert’s flight across America with Lolita. “Queue” can be an order or sequence of events: The camp was one step closer for Humbert to get what he wanted, Lolita to himself, and ultimately to loose everything.
Nabokov rarely makes coincidences and clues so obvious, however. To dig deeper, slang is another aspect of language that he is proficient with. In A Dictionary of the Underworld one can actually find that Q by itself is slang. Referring to the cue (also Quilty's nickname) ball in a game of billiards and coined sometime in the late 19th century, Q means the initiation of a deception. Humbert initiates several deceptions throughout Lolita. With the Farlows, he intimates that he is the biological father (through an old affair) to Lolita. He hides the death of Charlotte from Lolita, saying she is just convalescing at a fictitious hospital. He plays a deception every evening at each hotel they stay at along their route. And the greatest deception of all is the one that Humbert plays on the reader. Since we can never know what actually happens except through Humbert’s eyes, we are compelled to sympathize with a pedophile and murderer; we are tricked into helping Nabokov create Humbert. “Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not try to imagine me…” (p 129)
One other “q” word comes up when looking through slang dictionaries. “Quail” is slang for an attractive young woman. As a summer camp for girls, this could be an appropriate name for Camp Q, although it seems as weak as the Disney connection.
Nabokov obviously intended the reader to give Camp Q more than just a passing thought. The clues which are imbedded in the connotations of just the letter Q are numerous and deep. From the innocuous fairy queens to the ominous deceptions, Camp Q should not be passed over lightly.
Monday, September 28, 2009
My Quest
So I keep going back to the camp where Lolita was (chapter 27). I keep wondering what was the full name. Q couldn't be the entire name, could it? Humbert says that the cabins were named after Disney characters (p. 110), so my initial search was for Disney names. Nothing really comes up; and if the individual cabins were named after Disney characters, shouldn't the camp have a name that encompasses the whole genre? I did find reference to a Queen Clarion, who was supposed to be the head fairy for the pixies in Never Land. However, this seems to be a recent addition to Peter Pan's story (roughly 2008) so no chance that Nabokov would have considered this character even for one of the cabin names.
So I decided to look at slang and nicknames that it could possibly be. And I discovered that the letter Q could be slang on it's own! Referring to the cue (yep, also Quilty's nick name) ball in a game of billiards, Q means to initiate a deception! This reference comes from A Dictionary of the Underworld, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1949. The term appears to have been coined sometime in the 19th century.
Other possible "q" names that the camp may have been named include:
- quail-an attractive young woman (New Dictionary of American Slang), and
- a word that refers to a particular part of the female anatomy, which I won't post (but you can e-mail me and ask), and which may make sense since the camp lake is called Climax Lake.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Maybe we should watch both?
Did you know that the 1997 film version of Lolita (with Jeremy Irons) is listed under the subject of "erotic films" in the MSU library catalog, while the 1962 version (for which Nabokov wrote the screen play) is listed under the subject of "sexual ethics drama" in the same catalog? Why the difference, I wonder?
Monday, September 21, 2009
Annotations to Lolita
Reading through chapters 10 & 11, I began to realize that Nabokov plays and preys on our ideas of feminine beauty in his descriptions of Lolita. Page 39: Humbert describes her (Lolita's? Annabel's? always the reader is left unsure of what vision H.H. is really seeing) "indrawn abdomen", and "puerile (meaning juvenile or not fully mature) hips". Page 41: "[m]arvelous skin...tender and tanned, not the least blemish" and her walk, "[a] faint suggestion of turned in toes" and "[a] kind of wiggly looseness below the knee". Page 42: "swelling of her tense narrow nates...and the seaside of her schoolgirl thighs." Page 43: "a stippled armpit". Page 44: "her lips as read as licked candy, the lower one prettily plump". Page 45: "the gooseberry fuzz of her shin". Page 49: "her neat calf".
Taken together; tight abdomen, small hips, smooth tanned skin, a suggestion of hips swinging, tight buttocks, clean/hairless armpits and legs, red plump lips; these form the basis of our idea of feminine beauty today. Nabokov brings into question what we regard as beauty and how it differs from the pedophile's view of the perfect girl child. Can we condemn H.H.'s attraction, if, in fact, we are striving to attain just such an image ourselves? Women spends millions every year on make-up, depilatories, gym memberships, blemish removal, plastic surgery for lips, hips, stomach, etc., and tanning salons. I think that the joke is on us for condemning the character of H.H. all the while making ourselves in the image of the perfect pubescent girl.
An interesting article on Wikipedia about shaving of leg hair (men and women): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leg_shaving. Interesting, if true, although the lack of citation makes some of it doubtful. The idea that the appearance of juvenility is actually preferred seems to be a common theme, not only in this article, but in beauty standards in general.
(This may also serve as another response to Amanda; see previous post)
Taken together; tight abdomen, small hips, smooth tanned skin, a suggestion of hips swinging, tight buttocks, clean/hairless armpits and legs, red plump lips; these form the basis of our idea of feminine beauty today. Nabokov brings into question what we regard as beauty and how it differs from the pedophile's view of the perfect girl child. Can we condemn H.H.'s attraction, if, in fact, we are striving to attain just such an image ourselves? Women spends millions every year on make-up, depilatories, gym memberships, blemish removal, plastic surgery for lips, hips, stomach, etc., and tanning salons. I think that the joke is on us for condemning the character of H.H. all the while making ourselves in the image of the perfect pubescent girl.
An interesting article on Wikipedia about shaving of leg hair (men and women): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leg_shaving. Interesting, if true, although the lack of citation makes some of it doubtful. The idea that the appearance of juvenility is actually preferred seems to be a common theme, not only in this article, but in beauty standards in general.
(This may also serve as another response to Amanda; see previous post)
To Amanda
Perhaps the great genius of Nabokov can be seen in the way he creates his "coward at heart". Not one to defend the actions of a pedophile, I would rather focus on the creation of one. H. H. draws the reader in to his story, the detective novel to which he could be said to be both the pro- and antagonist. Can just any author make a coward so interesting? I couldn't put the book down during the first reading trying to solve the "mystery" before reaching the end, where all would be reveled anyways. This second reading has been very informative, and I'm glad that I had first read Lolita in an un-annotated copy from the library (for I must confess that I am a shameless cheat, and probably would have read the annotations first had I the option).
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Common Place Books and Good Quotes
I just set up a link to my common place book. I haven't put my quotes in it yet, so you won't get very far trying to look at it. Sorry. :( But I did want to comment on Jared's latest post about Lolita. I, too, was caught up with the same line! Nabokov is bringing the reader into the the mind of Humbert, and bringing Humbert into the reader's mind. It's kind of like a sign that says "Look at me". Would we have looked at the sign had it not said that? Maybe, but the important thing is that the sign is bringing attention to itself rather than any message that it is relaying. In the same way, we are now to look at Humbert Humbert not as some message that the author is trying to relay but as his own separate entity, an entity that we actually create because we are imagining him. So, if we are personally imagining Humbert and his exploits, are we as much a part of his crimes as he is, since he wouldn't be committing those crimes if nobody was there to read about and imagine them?
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Biographies on the 'Net
I thought it might be interesting to do a quick little internet search to find some biographies of our author. And I found something interesting. First I did a search for Faber pencils, because Nabokov writes about a four foot long one received while he was sick as a child. What I really wanted to find was a picture of the gigantic art instrument, but what came up was this: In Search of Memory Interestingly, the author of this work claims that Nabokov himself was the chronophobiac. In support of his theory, the author sites passages from Speak, Memory, rather than a third party source. So, I was interested to see how prevalent it was for biographers to refer to Speak, Memory when writing about Nabokov's life. My next Google search brought up An Absence Of Wood Nymphs, an article written for The September 14, 1959 issue of "Sports Illustrated". This is an article about Nabokov's many excursions for butterfly hunting. Again, however, the author chose to snip excerpts from Speak, Memory, rather than trying for outside sources to corroborate the authenticity of the autobiography. I'm not sure what this means, perhaps it's because he is held in such high regard as an author that it would be foolish to question is personal work, I'm not sure.
And who were Vladimir Nabokov's parents? From his autobiography, I can tell that his father was deeply involved in politics, but were they nobility or such also? He writes about playing with the family treasures; jewelry of tiaras, chokers, and rings; which would lead me to believe they were wealthy, and says that the local peasants refer to his father as "barin" which is a type of land owner, but also royalty? Are tiaras a common household item for the rich?
And who were Vladimir Nabokov's parents? From his autobiography, I can tell that his father was deeply involved in politics, but were they nobility or such also? He writes about playing with the family treasures; jewelry of tiaras, chokers, and rings; which would lead me to believe they were wealthy, and says that the local peasants refer to his father as "barin" which is a type of land owner, but also royalty? Are tiaras a common household item for the rich?
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Day One of Nabokov with Dr. Sexson
The telling is in the details. Nabokov wants us to look past the obvious and examine the details. This is probably similar to catching butterflies and actually appreciating them. On a summer's walk, one may encounter thousands of bugs without ever being aware of it. Nabokov wants us to become aware (of the butterflies, at least). Butterflies are creatures that have taking the art of mimicry to a whole other level. Surely, nothing as gorgeous as butterflies could have evolved if we believe Darwin's theory. It is the attention to detail that the butterflies have developed that we should try to emulate when we read or write or perform or do anything worth doing.
The class list is a work of art. Who would have thought that it would match so perfectly the make-believe list from Lolita? The repetition found in fiction is repeated in real life. Or perhaps it's the other way around: Fiction repeats real life, so therefore our class list maybe isn't so spectacular, after all. It is a cool coincidence, however. One that would seem to be made up to an outside observer.
The class list is a work of art. Who would have thought that it would match so perfectly the make-believe list from Lolita? The repetition found in fiction is repeated in real life. Or perhaps it's the other way around: Fiction repeats real life, so therefore our class list maybe isn't so spectacular, after all. It is a cool coincidence, however. One that would seem to be made up to an outside observer.
Monday, August 31, 2009
How to start a book
Whenever I pick up a book for the first time and read the first paragraph or two, I always wonder to myself how long the author took to create that particular opening. Starts have usually been difficult for me, and, usually, I write one that I know I will throw out in favor of a revised version, generally made after the completion of the work. I really like Nabokov's opening paragraphs to his story. I had never really thought about the world without me in it. Egocentric, perhaps, but unlike the chronophobiac in his first paragraph, I know nothing of a world before I was here, and so it has little impact on my personal consciousness. I do, however, like the idea of looking at our lives as "a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." (p. 1) I can relate to this, since we cannot truly know what happened before our birth and we will never know what will happen after our death. To us, then, is left only a single span of time wrapped between a pair of eternities that we can know nothing about. I would like to end on the final sentence from the second paragraph: "In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much." (p. 2) To me this means that life might get boring if we lived forever. In order to properly appreciate the time that we are given, we must have an expiration date.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
When did washable markers make their debute?
Lee Stickler's blog made me wonder: when did washable markers come out? I don't remember if the markers I used as child were washable or not, although judging from what I've found they probably were not. What I could find browsing the internet seems to indicate that Crayola introduced washable markers in 1987 and washable crayons in 1991 or 92. Here are the links if anybody is interested:
Binney & Smith History - document
Interactive Timeline
Condensed Timeline - pdf
Binney & Smith History - document
Interactive Timeline
Condensed Timeline - pdf
My First Memory
My first memory goes something like this:
I wanted salt and pepper on my dinner; I don't remember what was for dinner, I just remember that I wanted salt and pepper on it. I asked for the salt and pepper, which Dad helpfully applied to my meal; I was just about two at the time. The reason that this memory stands out to me is because Dad put the pepper on the food first and I had specifically asked for the salt then pepper! I don't remember anything of the meal after that, but, checking the details of the memory with my parents, it turns out I threw my first big tantrum over that. Mom thinks we may have been having meatloaf, but Dad (who does the cooking [yeah, sort of reversed, I know]) thinks it may have been plain hamburgers with veggies on the side; it was ground beef, either way - YUCK!
So, like Nabokov, I don't always remember things as clearly as it seems I should. Being able to check with my parents was a big help. I wonder how Nabokov's autobiography would have been different had he kept a journal. Part of the reason that Mom was able to remember my tantrum is because she is a meticulous diary-keeper, and she keeps all of her diaries. It also helped that she knew what I was talking about, and knew the year that it happened, and was able to locate the date that it happened (August 23, 1983). I think that's an incredible feat of memory in and of itself, and I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that she writes everything down. I tried it for a while - keeping a diary (or journal, if you'd rather) - but it just made me realize that I never did anything worth writing down. But maybe, now that I'm starting a family of my own, I should re-evaluate the idea of diary-keeping, for posterity's sake (and just in case my son has a similar class assignment).
I wanted salt and pepper on my dinner; I don't remember what was for dinner, I just remember that I wanted salt and pepper on it. I asked for the salt and pepper, which Dad helpfully applied to my meal; I was just about two at the time. The reason that this memory stands out to me is because Dad put the pepper on the food first and I had specifically asked for the salt then pepper! I don't remember anything of the meal after that, but, checking the details of the memory with my parents, it turns out I threw my first big tantrum over that. Mom thinks we may have been having meatloaf, but Dad (who does the cooking [yeah, sort of reversed, I know]) thinks it may have been plain hamburgers with veggies on the side; it was ground beef, either way - YUCK!
So, like Nabokov, I don't always remember things as clearly as it seems I should. Being able to check with my parents was a big help. I wonder how Nabokov's autobiography would have been different had he kept a journal. Part of the reason that Mom was able to remember my tantrum is because she is a meticulous diary-keeper, and she keeps all of her diaries. It also helped that she knew what I was talking about, and knew the year that it happened, and was able to locate the date that it happened (August 23, 1983). I think that's an incredible feat of memory in and of itself, and I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that she writes everything down. I tried it for a while - keeping a diary (or journal, if you'd rather) - but it just made me realize that I never did anything worth writing down. But maybe, now that I'm starting a family of my own, I should re-evaluate the idea of diary-keeping, for posterity's sake (and just in case my son has a similar class assignment).
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Why not Mnemosyne?, or The Problem with Memory
I feel that Mr. Nabokov received some bad advice when told he should not title this work Speak, Mnemosyne. It would really make for a more intriguing title; little old ladies be damned! But anyways, our first assignment (beyond, of course creating this blog) is to put ourselves in the shoes of Nabokov and tease from the hidden convolutions of our brains our first memory. Is this, I wonder, our first real memory or our memory of what we first remember? This is a difficult task set before us, and I must give some rumination to it before setting it to type. I do seem to recall it had something to do with salt and pepper, though.
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