Subject
Nabokov in Chicago Tribune (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
In today's Chicago Tribune there is an essay by Louise Kiernan
(reprinted on the editorial page of the Seattle Times, and, doubtless,
scores of other papers) where Nabokov is very prominently invoked. The essay
is entitled "Private Lives and Public People: Ick!" and in it she complaints
about all the embarrassingly private and distasteful information about
public figures that even self-proclaimed morally upright citizens seem to
crave and gobble up. She gives examples: "Bob Packwood kisses like a Pez
dispenser. High Grant's equipment is 'cute' but a 6 out of 10 on the size
scale. And Prince Charles dreams of living inside his mistress's knickers"
[if I remember it correctly, his original statement was even more "Ick!"]
After numerous further examples as well as Ick!s, she comes to the
Nabokov part, and the first sentence -- at least in the Seattle Times -- is
also indented separately between the two columns of her piece:
"We have become a nation of what Vladimir Nabokov aptly described
in 'Lolita' as 'paradoxical prudes.' On one hand, we have our family
values, our V-chips, our outrage at pornography on the Internet. But with
the other, we are busy flipping through television shows, magazines and
newspapers that give us so much detailed information about other people's
sex lives you would think the rest of us hadn't figured out how our
plumbing works."
[I hope this message is not going to be cited in further studies
of the indecency on Internet!]
Galya Diment
In today's Chicago Tribune there is an essay by Louise Kiernan
(reprinted on the editorial page of the Seattle Times, and, doubtless,
scores of other papers) where Nabokov is very prominently invoked. The essay
is entitled "Private Lives and Public People: Ick!" and in it she complaints
about all the embarrassingly private and distasteful information about
public figures that even self-proclaimed morally upright citizens seem to
crave and gobble up. She gives examples: "Bob Packwood kisses like a Pez
dispenser. High Grant's equipment is 'cute' but a 6 out of 10 on the size
scale. And Prince Charles dreams of living inside his mistress's knickers"
[if I remember it correctly, his original statement was even more "Ick!"]
After numerous further examples as well as Ick!s, she comes to the
Nabokov part, and the first sentence -- at least in the Seattle Times -- is
also indented separately between the two columns of her piece:
"We have become a nation of what Vladimir Nabokov aptly described
in 'Lolita' as 'paradoxical prudes.' On one hand, we have our family
values, our V-chips, our outrage at pornography on the Internet. But with
the other, we are busy flipping through television shows, magazines and
newspapers that give us so much detailed information about other people's
sex lives you would think the rest of us hadn't figured out how our
plumbing works."
[I hope this message is not going to be cited in further studies
of the indecency on Internet!]
Galya Diment