Jansy,
As many have said before truth is the underside of comedy (but, unfortunately, the converse doesn't seem right.) I'm surprised at the Graham Greene choice, not because GG isn't funny--there's lots of humor there, but because its rarely talked about. And of course someone with both an ear for comedy and pathos was just the right person to "discover" Lolita! Dimitri somewhere mentioned that he had read some of Greene's novels at home as a youngster, but never revealed which ones nor whether VN enjoyed any. Since I see parallels between the writers, I'd certainly like to know. Fran Assa
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 20:55:21 -0500
From: nabokv-l@UTK.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] [Fwd: Sighting: Truth and Parody
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
-------- Original Message --------
Definitely...I'm haunted by Nabokov... Today, at the lobby of a hotel, I opened the local paper (
www.zerohora.com.br) and there was a short article about VN "with or without abyss". It was written by humorist Luiz Fernando Veríssimo and paraphrased lines of Nabokov about the fine thread separating a writer from an abyss, one side parody, on the opposite, truth.
For Veríssimo, Nabokov was one of the first to suggest this balance between humor and seriousness and the road into post-modern writing (although he himself refused this label). Before VN, only Graham Greene managed this balance without falling into the abyss of an excess of seriousness. Woody Allen equally managed, acording to Veríssimo, but Nabokov was the most agile of them all.
(Later I'll try to send a copy of the article for "sighting", but internet connections are difficult because of the inclement weather..)
Jansy Mello
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