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But who is Nabokov anyway? That's what British journalist Andrew
Neil, who will soon take a job in New York as editor and chief
reporter of a new television current affairs program on the FOX
network, is famed by his countrymen for asking at a conference of
senior editors. Proof of ignorance or feigned unawareness,
"Fergie", as Charles Nevin of the Independent calls him, is a
ferocious, bullying sort of guy who "puts himself across wittily
and often savagely. Great TV".
Another Brit, John Osborne, author of John Osborne on England,
who if the reviewer has portrayed him correctly seems to be a
sort of British Rush Limbaugh, doesn't like, because he doesn't
seem to know, who Nabokov is either. The reviewer says that
Osborne reveals traits that he claims to despise in others,
"Contempt", "brutishness", bullying", "lustreless
discourtesy" : they crop up again and again, these
words - Nabokov is a brute and a bully - with...
The Guardian April 30, 1994
Lulu's zany new furniture shop opened this month in Ottawa,
This essay is to be found in the book Fabergé: Imperial
Jeweler, which was published coincidentally with a recent
Fabergé exhibition shown in London Paris and St. Petersburg.
The editorial comment of the Christian Science Monitor's reviewer
continues,
At a recent Antiquarian Booksellers conference in Los Angeles a
pristine and rare letter in Russian from Nabokov to his friend
Gleb Struve appeared. The sales blurb said it was,
Also, a rare find from Ken Lopez, an antiquarian book dealer in
Hadley Massachusetts, a first edition Olympia Press Lolita:
Perhaps you have "searched" the computer, as I have, using
Nabokov as a "keyword" and run into Peter Nabokov,
anthropologist, author, and in the end relative to Vladimir
Nabokov. I encountered him so many times and so insistently
did his name require that I discover what connection, if any he
had with our shared protagonist that, after a less than thorough
investigation, I determined that:
'I was six when my mother pointed out some bark-covered
wigwams from the window of a train. The sight of them
really struck me. "My God" I thought, "these people
were here all along'
In his ability to recreate a world through the slow steady
cumulation of detail, in the fecundity of his scholarship and the
accuracy of his prose and on many other vibratory vectors, I
consider P. Nabokov to resemble, at least slightly, his
distinguished cousin.
In closing, you will find excerpts from a short story entitled
"A New Lo; or Everybody into the Meme Pool" by Chuck Hammill
published in (on?) the electronic journal Holy Temple of Mass
Consumption. I have given a quick synopsis of the plot and
included the parodic quatrains from the story. The closing lines
from the author are abridged.
This is the story of Charlie Holmes, one time boyfriend to
Dolores Haze of Ramsdale. At this moment he is a Virtual Reality
salesman who after hawking a five minute "ride" to a rich
tourist just arrived from another planet, reminisces about his
first love:
"Like, he is just soooooo possessive, you know?" she
would go on."I mean, OK, he takes me on cross-country trips,
right? And, like, he buys me lotsa nice presents. But,
Jeez, he's got all these rules, you know? He doesn't want me
dating other guys. I can't smoke, I can't do amateur
theater, I can't do this, I can't do that. I mean,
honestly, he treats me like a child! I don't need this."
I'd try to sympathize, of course, but it wasn't easy,
because I still carried a torch for her myself.
"Mr. Schiller, Please sit down. I'm afraid I have to speak
to you about your wife and child."
Charlie goes on to accuse Schiller of neglecting his wife and out
of stupidity allowing her to nearly die,
Cyberpunk, cyberpunk, there they are,
Virtual Valerie's long in the tooth,
Ellie Dee's a plain cyber-slut harlot.
'Lectronic Lolita, I tell you the truth,
You're my fav'rite A.I. V.R. starlet.
Way too close to the truth. We almost lost her. Honest to
Christ, we almost lost her. My God.
Remember: almost. Only almost. Lo is OK. Girl-child is
OK. Gave birth on the chopper enroute to hospital. Better
than the snake pit they found her in--but there were
complications.
Ma chère Lolita, dans le soleil d'été,
And tell me that ain't funnier and truer than that
throat-chokin' gargle that other cheap bastard wrote ya'.
CLIFF's NOTES TO ADD TO SURREALITY
BUT READ THE STORY FIRST
The story is intended as a weird cyberpunk riff on Nabokov's
Lolita, with distinct quantum-relativistic overtones.
First, much of the reminiscing in A New Lo is done by a
character who actually appears in Lolita, but gets maybe four
sentences all together. His name is Charlie Holmes (Galactic
Coincidence Control gets credit for the first name and last
initial), he does take Lo's virginity, and is (in the book)
killed in the war. The point at which one realizes that Lo =
Lolita makes her "boyfriend problems" with Humbert and Quilty
sort of mind-tickling, and even Joycean. (Nabokov himself pays
homage to Joyce with phrases like "portrait of the artist as a
younger brute" and "internal combustion martyr"--and to
surreality generally with Quilty's observation, "Really, Mr.
Humbert, you were not an ideal stepfather." ) One gets a single
clue with the reminiscence about Lo going home from camp
to "Ramsdale," but it's a thin one.
The doggerel poetry generally matches the rhyme pattern of
that in the original novel, part 2, Chapter 25, and even
reproduces the key line "Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?"
which is another clue to who Lo is.
We then pick up the plot of the novel, since, even though
Lolita and her deaf, stupid husband are awash in cash, they do
(in the book) trek to the godforsaken Alaskan wilderness outpost
of Grey Star in her ninthmonth for her to give birth. Charlie
Holmes--Lo's first lover, recall--departs now from his negligible
role in the actual novel to check this out.
Weirdness begins to escalate, as the fat, crazy mercenary he
works with is also an ex-boyfriend of Lo's (which is possible,
since she does spend a couple years traveling around the USA) and
so he takes a personal interest in his job.
Straightforward plot development, and the "check also first
name Lolita" made explicit for the not-too-swift. And a key
observation that Lo's husband may be so stupid as to be
dangerous.
Ever-more-obscene poetry, introducing the phrase "giving
wirehead" into cyberspeak, and the key word (nano)nymphet for
those who still maybe puzzled about who's who.
Cut back to Lo. Doesn't look good for her. Stupid mates
can killya', it seems ever more clear. As in the novel itself,
Lo and her girl-child do endure a very unlucky childbirth on
Christmas Day.
More obscene poetry. Suggests maybe something survived,
though.
Couple more quatrains, one using actual first two lines of
one poem in the actual book, one cutely mentioning a couple of
currently sexy cyber-ladies.
GOTCHA!
Still weirder. Tying up loose ends. The bit about her age
as 5,300 days comes from one of Humbert's poems in the book.
Quatrain in French, like in original, but got a great rhyme
for French term for nymphet. Quite proud of that.
Still weirder.
Really put out enough relativistic physics to blow 'em away.
Covered a lot of territory, n'est-ce pas?
THE LOLITA EFFECT | VN COLLATIONS | BUTTERFLIES |