[snip]

Shade is here putting himself in the place of Hazel, imagining her last moments alive. The word needed where “stang” appears is one that would come naturally to Shade and, for fullest effect, to Hazel as well.

I can't agree. Shade would like to spot a rare wall fern as he's being led to his execution. To him, I suspect, mere natural words and syntax in a poem would be a surrender. I think the attitude he's displaying here is like the defiance to tyrants that Nabokov recommended in "The Art of Literature and Commonsense".

“Stang” itself, I hope we’re all agreed, is not such a word. Seldom if ever in this country, I’d wager, has a natural-born, apple-pie American, in the course of his/her ordinary conversation, referred to a pole in a bus as a stang. It is therefore out of character for Shade to use the word in this way. I would expect VN to be as careful about this--about being true to his characters--as he was in writing dialogue for Lolita. For this reason I’m not convinced by A. Bouzza’s argument...

From Shade's point of view, the presence of the word in Scots is appropriate in conjunction with Lochanhead, as are the associations with "steel", "tang", and even "sting", especially that of death.

or by the argument about the goal post. A goal post is not a pole (or a handrail) in an American bus, period.

I think the idea was more that that's how Nabokov knew the word or why it meant something to him.

As for defamiliarization, even that all-too-handy concept requires, if it’s to be effective, some staging, something in the way of a suitable context.

SKB’s view is more interesting. According to him, VN uses the word as part of showing what a lousy poet Shade is. Although I’m sympathetic to that view, I consider “stang” to be so outrageously inappropriate as to be unconvincing even as an example of Shade’s frequent mediocrity. It’s a clunker of a word, all right, but a clunker that VN, not Shade, must claim the credit for.

Of course there's that possibility too. I don't think Nabokov's characters always behave with perfect psychological plausibility. If he wants a word to be used, he has one of his galley slaves use it. Or so it seems to me.

Incidentally, Stan, it's good to have you back after such a long absence.

Indeed. I'm tempted to suggest that "stang" looked forward to "Stan", but Nabokov probably wasn't that prescient.

Jerry Friedman also doubts that "gnats" is relevant.

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

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