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THOUGHTS: Joe-Roe Marital Enigma in Lolita
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Matthew Roth has written:
"VN has, in Eysteinian fashion, placed a real object in his fictional milieu, but it is an object from the future, like one of those drawings from a children's magazine where one must find "what's wrong with this picture," and upon closer inspection we see that the horse and buggy has a steering wheel."
I wonder if a similar importation from the future doesn't occur in LOLITA, when HH quotes from Lo's teen-magazines, "The Joe-Roe marital enigma is making yaps flap" -- the 'Joe' in this case perhaps being Joe DiMaggio, with 'Roe" being his wife, Marilyn Monroe. The two were not yet married in late 1953 when Nabokov finished his manuscript, but surely it would not have taken that big a leap of intuition to surmise they eventually would tie the knot (they began dating in '52) and wind up as fodder for the gossip mags. ("Yankee Jock Marries Hollywood Starlet!")
Robert Borski
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"VN has, in Eysteinian fashion, placed a real object in his fictional milieu, but it is an object from the future, like one of those drawings from a children's magazine where one must find "what's wrong with this picture," and upon closer inspection we see that the horse and buggy has a steering wheel."
I wonder if a similar importation from the future doesn't occur in LOLITA, when HH quotes from Lo's teen-magazines, "The Joe-Roe marital enigma is making yaps flap" -- the 'Joe' in this case perhaps being Joe DiMaggio, with 'Roe" being his wife, Marilyn Monroe. The two were not yet married in late 1953 when Nabokov finished his manuscript, but surely it would not have taken that big a leap of intuition to surmise they eventually would tie the knot (they began dating in '52) and wind up as fodder for the gossip mags. ("Yankee Jock Marries Hollywood Starlet!")
Robert Borski
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm