Subject
Para Nabokoviana: 'when Lo takes to the [tennis] court' (fwd)
Date
Body
>In his review ('Grace, sweat and money'; The Spectator, 26 June 1999) of new
>tennis anthology William Scammell writes about 'enduring appeal in fascination
>of what's difficult, as Yeats said of writing poetry'. He goes on to define the
>thrill that tennis offers: "There's a visceral thrill in swinging at a ball and
>connecting. ... There's a psycho-sexual one, too, sometimes by proxy - see
>Humbert's purple prose when Lo takes to the court in Lolita. ..."
>--
>George
---------------------------------
This reminds me of Nabokov's reply to those searching for symbolism in his
work:
"Nabokov disliked symbolism and symbol-chasers. He once rebuked a critic
publicly - not to 'answer' him, Nabokov explained, 'but to ask him to remove
his belongings'. The hapless William Woodin Rowe was particularly chastised
for the third part of *Nabokov's Deceptive World* (1971), entitled 'Sexual
Manipulations': 'no less ludicrous in his examination of Lolita's tennis and
his claim that the tennis balls represent testicles (those of a giant
albino, no doubt).' ..."
-- Craig Raine, in the afterword to the Penguin edition
of Lolita
-- Alex Billington <alex@zembla.freeserve.co.uk>