Tuesday, November 17

'In my beginning, is my end'

• most author's later works are considered weaker, like Shakespeare's later works: The Tempest and The Winter's Tale
• Zach's Blog: 'I think Nabokov is probably smiling'
• "This is about as good as it gets" ~Dr S on TT
• Circle back to where we started, Return to what is both familiar and unfamiliar
• "what we call the beginning, is also the end" ~Toilet
• Proust's 'The Cookie'
• VN is obsessed with trying to recapture the past

TRANSPARENT THINGS:

• The past is connected to the present
• Lolita + Humbert = EAP + Annabelle Lee
• we call into the history of objects, and are trapped there

Important themes:

1. supernatural
2. commentary on his own writing
3. metafiction in a sense, because he addresses the audience
4. "within the small compass of transparent things" ~Brian Boyd

Happy Original of Laura day!

relationship between reader and writer:

• Ada
• Look at the Hs!
• Laura
• not as extraordinary as Lolita and PF, but other largely enjoyable things going on

Dmitri Nabokov: who is this man?!?!

Everyman

Freezer Burn: in this movie the main character falls in love with a 14 year old girl, but instead of not caring about age, like HH, he cryogenically freezes himself until she is 30, so they can be 30 together. Although it doesn't turn out like he planned, it is an interesting alternative to HH's nastiness.

dreams (saves his wife) VS reality (strangles his wife)

Death is a clue: no one is ever really gone in this story

Mr. R: starts the novel "hullo person" (pg 508)~ dies and the becomes a ghost

Underline all of these:

• fire
• ghost/ spector/ phantasm/ spirit
• strangle
• gravity

Boston Strangler

Dueling narrators:

• Mr. R.
• 'we' in italics = narrator
• Vladimir Nabokov

Hugh= you: pronouns and narrators throw you off all the time

All these people are dead at the end:

• Armonde
• Hugh
• father
• Mr R