Bootle's
points are marvelous. I've had something like that same thought about
the "stranger", "danger" myself as well as another of Nabokov's when
discussing Gogol: namely the "cosmic" and the "comic" are separated by
one letter. I would only add, again, that I personally love the word
sex,and especially "sexy" accept for its recent use by reporters and
businessmen as a hip stand in for "exciting" as in "I know the subprime
mortgage crisis was not initially a sexy story, but turned out..."
--- On Wed, 9/17/08, Stan Kelly-Bootle <skb@BOOTLE.BIZ>
wrote:
From: Stan Kelly-Bootle <skb@BOOTLE.BIZ>
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] "Sex" to Sebastian Knight and Kinbote--and VN
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Date: Wednesday, September 17, 2008, 7:49 PM
Chaz/JA/JM: it is quite strange that certain
words sound ugly to certain ears without upsetting others.