On the back of my 50th anniversary edition, a Vintage paperback, of Lolita.
A good suit, a good haircut, a good shave.
In appearance an entirely unapologetic bourgeois in perhaps his early 60's.
In fact a White Russian emigree from a family of minor nobility.
Wikipedia reports he was not only anti-communist but pro-Cold War.
He despised the New Left and hippies.
I admire the man's style, wholly unaffected by, because molded quite before, the blue-jeans egalitarianism of the sixties.
Vladimir Nabokov.
Update.
By a disturbing coincidence, I have started re-reading Lolita after finishing The Unquiet, by John Connolly.
Readers familiar with both will understand why I say that.
Nabokov's Humbert Humbert admires a Dante and a Petrarch who remind us painfully of Muhammed and the Ayatollahs of Iran.
People no modern of the West can imitate with impunity.
Had that been possible, Lolita would not have been.
No comments:
Post a Comment