Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0009601, Thu, 15 Apr 2004 13:16:07 -0700

Subject
Fw: Re:The Price of Salt
Date
Body
----- Original Message -----
From: "D.K.Holm" <dholm@cinemonkey.com>
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> I saw a copy of Patricia Highsmith's formerly pseudonymous novel in a
store the other day. The cover announces it as "the book that inspired
Lolita."
>
> DKH
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Now recognized as a masterwork, the scandalous novel that anticipated
Nabokov's Lolita.
"I have long had a theory that Nabokov knew The Price of Salt and modeled
the climactic cross-country car chase in Lolita on Therese and Carol's
frenzied bid for freedom," writes Terry Castle in The New Republic about
this novel, arguably Patricia Highsmith's finest, first published in 1952
under the pseudonym Clare Morgan. Soon to be a new film, The Price of Salt
tells the riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a
department-store day job, whose salvation arrives one day in the form of
Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce. They
fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private
investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her
daughter and her lover. With this reissue, The Price of Salt may finally be
recognized as a major twentieth-century American novel.
>