Subject
Nabokov, beauty, and toilets
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Date
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From: Gennady Barabtarlo <gragb@showme.missouri.edu>
A former Russian major here, now studying "international law" at U. of
Virginia, has sent me this curious anecdote:
<<"...an interesting little story: While I was working last year in the
Career Planning office here, a friend of mine in the office and I
used to read on our lunch hour. At the time I was reading
Nabokov's autobiography and was trying to describe to my
friend N's brilliance and how his sentences "trip" off your
tongue, how they are exquisite combinations of sounds. So
I told her that I could open up to any page in the book,
pick out a sentence at random and read it to her and she
would be convinced. And I did. I opened it up to a point
much later in the book that I had never read, and blindly
laid my finger on a sentence about ---- a toilet. Of all
sentences to land on, I landed on the one about a toilet,
the most disgusting of human apparati. But it was the best
and most beautiful sentence about a toilet I had ever read,
a great lyrical tribute to the toilet in his parent's
house. And my friend was absolutely convinced of N's
brilliance from that point forward, based on one sentence
about a toilet.">>
A former Russian major here, now studying "international law" at U. of
Virginia, has sent me this curious anecdote:
<<"...an interesting little story: While I was working last year in the
Career Planning office here, a friend of mine in the office and I
used to read on our lunch hour. At the time I was reading
Nabokov's autobiography and was trying to describe to my
friend N's brilliance and how his sentences "trip" off your
tongue, how they are exquisite combinations of sounds. So
I told her that I could open up to any page in the book,
pick out a sentence at random and read it to her and she
would be convinced. And I did. I opened it up to a point
much later in the book that I had never read, and blindly
laid my finger on a sentence about ---- a toilet. Of all
sentences to land on, I landed on the one about a toilet,
the most disgusting of human apparati. But it was the best
and most beautiful sentence about a toilet I had ever read,
a great lyrical tribute to the toilet in his parent's
house. And my friend was absolutely convinced of N's
brilliance from that point forward, based on one sentence
about a toilet.">>