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.

Also in chapter 27, Lolita reveals that she had a lover at camp (p. 112, "Fact I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you..."), spoiling the "innocence" of the nymphet for H.H. (the fact of which he doesn't get yet), although (unless you've read A.A.'s annotations) we don't know who, yet.

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?

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)

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).

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?

This photograph, taken when I was six, gives an interesting glimpse of my childhood. I sit on the "porch" of Rosie's dog house, our black lab given to me for my fourth birthday. In my lap I hold one of her puppies from her first litter, Rusty, which we gave to my cousins. This picture has a strangely nostalgic feel for me. It seems like a childhood in disarray. The tipped over toy horse in the foreground, obviously too small for my age with a broken front wheel, bits of sticks scattered along the ground intermingled with straw from the dog house, a crushed cinder block below me to the left, and the wheel of a plastic tricycle just visible on the right, all give the impression that things had been disrupted, dismantled. Add to that, neither I nor the puppy are looking at the picture taker (probably my mom), and it seems like a memory of a time forgotten, or, perhaps, unremembered. One might think it was summer, since I am wearing Mario Brothers flip-flops, a shirt that is possibly one or two sizes too small, and light pants, however, as this was in California, this was more likely fall. Too-long bangs hide my eyes from the viewer, adding to the impression of general neglect present in the entire photo and indicating that the school year had not yet started.

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?

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.