Response #4 (for 9/17)

I get the sense that the forward and first chapter of Lolita exist largely to set up Humbert Humbert as an extremely unreliable narrator. We find out immediately that Humbert was imprisoned, so we know to expect the usual charms one gets from an "intelligent criminal." This comes through later in the forward too, when John Ray Jr. comments on the text's lack of profanities and "how magically [Humbert's] singing violin can conjure up a tendresse." In these moments, it becomes very clear how Humbert is going to portray himself to us: guilty but not too guilty, and linguistically smooth even when describing his inner turmoil.

Humbert wastes no time painting this picture for us himself. After poetically and passionately describing his obsession with Lolita, he addresses his audience as "ladies and gentlemen of the jury" and refers to the story to come as a "tangle of thorns." Humbert knows very well that he's about to be judged, so he must be quick to get us at least partially on his side. He wants us to see Lolita as an enchantress and the situation as complicated.

Response #3 (for 9/12)

Our discussion on the relevance of The Enchanter as a title made me see the scene I referenced in my last blog post in yet another light. To quote a different part of the moment:

"'Be quiet, it's nothing bad, it's just a kind of game, it happens sometimes, just be quiet,' he implored, middle-aged and sweaty, covering himself with a raincoat he had glimpsed in passing, shuddering, missing the armhole."

It isn't difficult to see how this is an extremely disenchanting moment, even before the sentence is picked apart at all. The protagonist is frantic and commanding, not to mention "sweaty," and impressing his conquest, in this moment, could not be farther from his mind. His self-believed position of Enchanter is no longer secure in any way.

This is emphasized by his use of the raincoat. Raincoats are protective devices by nature, as is the "enchanting" personality this man has used throughout the novel to hide his intentions from others and hold on to the young girl. In this scene, the raincoat isn't quite working with him, and he's struggling into it. In every sense of the word, the protagonist is no longer protected.

Response #2 (for 9/10)

Like many other people, I'm sure, I've noticed that Nabokov has an incredible ability for saying a lot with very few words. An example that sticks out occurs during the sex scene in The Enchanter (on my page 74).

"...[S]he shielded herself with her sharp little elbow, tearing from his grasp and still yelling senselessly, and somebody was pounding on the wall, demanding inconceivable silence."

It took me a while to wrap my head around the idea of "inconceivable silence." Those words together reveal so much about both the frame of mind of each character in that moment. He is wrapped up in the "noise" of being caught, and she is wrapped up in the "noise" of the shock of the situation, and all of this is soundtracked by her shrieking and his desperate attempts to quiet her. Of course silence would be the furthest thing from either of their minds, and we get a sense of that in only two words.

Also striking about "inconceivable silence" is how it fits into the "poetry" of that sentence. The whole bit's repetition of S sounds makes it stand out against the rest of the scene. It evokes something of a "hissing" in the mind's ear, fitting for the fallout of such a devious moment in time, particularly one so heavily influenced by a snakelike part of the male anatomy.

Response #1 (for 8/29)

Like many people in class, I found myself particularly struck by Nabokov's short, almost snippy answers throughout the interviews. This is not only because they are completely justified based on the occasional rudeness and stupidity of the questions, but also because they make me believe his long answers more. I often distrust famous writers in interviews; they're writers, after all, and my inner cynic can't resist the urge to assume they're fictionalizing themselves in the interest of "looking good." Nabokov doesn't seem to care about this, casting off questions one moment and answering them at great length the next. Of course this is a fictionalization of him as well, but it's a fictionalization that, from what I can tell, is coming from a much more genuine, trustworthy place.

I found this to be especially true on page 79, when Nabokov answers the question on lepidoptera. Though he's the same brutally honest person we've come to know so far ("Not the ability to repair a radio set; quite stubby fingers can do that."), it is explicitly clear that he cares about this subject a great deal, bringing into the answer his interest in butterflies, and even nodding to Lolita in his criticism of Webster's definition of "nymphet." It's quite different from most of his answers, entirely absent of criticism for the interviewer and a fair bit lengthier than the others, but it's still believable in the context of the Nabokov that Nabokov has invented for this interview. It does not give the sense that he's dropping his invented persona, but it does pull back the curtain a bit, revealing that while this persona is not entirely real, it is based in reality. 

(And once again, I apologize for the lateness of this post.)