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| Melody |
 Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:40 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 2242
Location: TX
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I am woman, hear me roar!
* discreet lady-like champagne burp * |
_________________
My heart told my head: This time, no. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:48 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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Discreet? Never, I say! 
Time for a new magnum! |
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| pedersencr |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:08 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 921
Location: New Orleans
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Ah, I see the neighbors are joining in. Hi, Melody!
Dancing is over this way. |
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| mitty |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:14 am |
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1359
Location: Way Down Yonder.......
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Marj
Never Kate, but sometimes Kat. Appropriate isn't it! 
I could never get anyone to call me Kate, they did not think it fit me. All the family calls me Katherine. Must be my autocratic attitude  .
Its so refreshing to talk here, I've been battling with doctors and nurse assistants all day  They think I'm pretty pushy too! |
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| pedersencr |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:24 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 921
Location: New Orleans
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Mitty,
Never saw you with your hair down before. Stunning! 
Charles |
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| mitty |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:41 am |
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1359
Location: Way Down Yonder.......
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Take back your Rumba, Ai!, Your Samba, AI, Your Conga, Ai,
Etc. Etc. Etc.
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| Melody |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:49 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 2242
Location: TX
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Note to self: Must party with the old farts more often!
* snickersnort *
Speaking of which -- where the hell is PAMBULA??? |
_________________
My heart told my head: This time, no. |
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| pedersencr |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:50 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 921
Location: New Orleans
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| Look at that lady go! |
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| mitty |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:54 am |
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1359
Location: Way Down Yonder.......
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Melody wrote: Note to self: Must party with the old farts more often!
* snickersnort *
Speaking of which -- where the hell is PAMBULA???
You young whippersnapper, she cried waving her cane about wildly.............. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 1:23 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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Well, I don't know about you guys, but I for one am officially shloshed, or schoshed, or snookered ... or .... or .... snooze!
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| pedersencr |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 6:30 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 921
Location: New Orleans
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| I definitely have to sleep this one off. |
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| mitty |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 11:39 pm |
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1359
Location: Way Down Yonder.......
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| Good Night, Sleep Tight, Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite.................... |
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| pedersencr |
| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 8:09 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 921
Location: New Orleans
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[The inspiration for this fanciful post comes from the intriguing question and the several excerpts that are included from Lolita, from Véra by Stacy Shiff and from The American Years by Brian Boyd. I hope the reader finds it enjoyable.]
"So, who’s the girl, Mister?"
It is the eternally interesting question! It never goes away! It first surfaces on the porch at The Enchanted Hunters hotel.
Quote: Mysterious voice: “Where the devil did you get her?”
Humbert: “I beg your pardon?”
Voice: “I said: the weather is getting better”
Humbert: “Seems so.”
Voice: “Who’s the lassie?”
Humbert: “My daughter.”
Voice: “You lie --- she’s not”
Humbert: “I beg your pardon?”
Voice: “I said July was hot. Where’s her mother?”
Humbert: “Dead.”
The mists swirl and the scene slowly changes in our imagination to a courtroom,
Magistrate: (reading from a sheet) Is this her?
Quote: stature: 57 inches
weight: 78 pounds
hair: chestnut
eyes: pale-gray
figure: linear
chest girth: 27 inches
waist girth: 23 inches
hip girth: 29 inches
thigh girth: 17 inches
calf girth: 11 inches
neck girth: 11 inches
upper arm girth: 8 inches
IQ: 121
Appendix: present
Humbert: Yes, Your Honor. That is Lolita. (p.126)
Magistrate: So, who’s the girl? Where did you pick her up?
Humbert: She’s my step-daughter, Your Honor. The daughter of Charlotte Haze.
Again our imagination blurs and we are at a reception. (Vera p.229)
Quote: Admirers: “[we] had not exactly expected the author to show up with his distinguished looking wife of thirty-three years.”
Vera: /smiling, unflappable/ “Yes, that is exactly why I am here.”
The stage turns yet again and through the mists we see emerging a visit with a biographer. (Boyd p211)
Reader: Who was Lolita? Who was the real-life Lolita?
Quote: Boyd: “He took one arm from a little girl who used to come to see Dmitri, one kneecap of another. He visited the school principal on the pretext of placing his little daughter. [He had none!] He searched out recent studies on physical and psychological development of American schoolgirls…”
Still inquisitive, the reader turns to an even more reliable source (Vera p.214)
Reader: Where did he find Lolita? Who was she in real life? Someone he knew?
Quote: Vera: “[he] sat on the Ithaca buses with notepad and listened carefully. He had also haunted playgrounds until his doing so had become awkward. There were otherwise no other little girls in his life” (p214)
Reader: No one else?
Vera: “[some of our friends] came to understand [his] earlier interest in their prepubescent daughter, whom Vladimir had taken to interviewing extensively…” (p205)
The stage turns a final time, and as the clouds part we imagine an unexpected meeting with the author himself, with the tables turned.
Author: So, now, You tell me! Who is Lolita to you? How do you see Lolita?
Reader: Well, might she really be a daughter of Galatea? The latest in the long line of daughters created in the same way, full-grown from an artist’s imagination? Smudged up a bit, but brought to life from the mythically beautiful ivory statue created by the sculptor Pygmalion? The sculptor who fell in love with his creation and prayed to Venus that his statue might live? And he with her? A sculptor who appears transformed totally downward in the modern version of your story to a degenerately lustful man. Whose wish for a nymphet of his imagination to live is nevertheless granted? But granted in a young girl whose love he can never have?
Author: Bosh! Nonsense! That is NOT how I created her! /showing considerable impatience with the visitor, now more like an intruder/
Reader: You say! But now she belongs to us, and for all time, in that immortality you wished for her. And now we will imagine how we see her, and bring her to life in our own imaginations.
Author: /silently fixes the intruder with a very hard stare, says nothing for a long time, then sighs resignedly./ And just how do you see her?
Reader: I see her as having a little bit in her of all girls growing up into womanhood. A little bit of each of our own twelve-year olds. And when we look at our own twelve-year olds, we each see just some bit of Lolita in them too. Lolita is partly our creation also, changing ever before our eyes, just as our own twelve-year olds change day-to-day before our eyes. She might have grown up to hum “I am a natural woman,” along with Carole King, and then to sing out loud “I am woman! Hear me roar!” along with Helen Reddy. She might have become the perfect She. She had a look in her eyes, a restlessness in her spirit. She might have become anything, just anything she wanted to be! And one day she shall be.
Author: /Now perhaps smiling faintly just a bit, he turns to you./ And the rest of you? How do you see her? |
Last edited by pedersencr on Thu Dec 14, 2006 2:57 pm; edited 1 time in total
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What we know is not what we think |
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| mitty |
| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 10:44 pm |
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 1359
Location: Way Down Yonder.......
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Charles,
That sounds sooo like Nabokov. Both Vera and Vladimir.
One impatient and the other unflappable.
Thanks for posting it. |
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