I was struck, when I read this in The Spectator, by the following
passage about Charlie Chaplin:
"He ordered 342 takes over a two-year period of a single shot in City
Lights -- the blind flower-seller handing over a bunch of violets to the
Little Tramp. Was this perfectionism? A manifestation of obsessive compulsive
disorder? Or was he behaving like a simple power-crazed brute?"
The number 342, as we know, plays a mysterious role in Lolita: it
is the house number in Lawn Street; the room number in the Enchanted Hunters
hotel; and the number of "hotels, motels and tourist homes" Humbert
"registered, if not actually stayed at" between July 5 and November 18, while
trying to trace his persecutor (Quilty).
A "two-year period" is also significant in Lolita.
Could Nabokov have known about the repeated takes of the City
Lights shot?
Anthony
Stadlen
"Oakleigh"
2A Alexandra Avenue
GB - London N22
7XE
Tel.: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857
For Existential Psychotherapy and
Inner Circle Seminars see:
http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com
In a message dated 22/04/2014 15:15:27 GMT Daylight Time,
nabokv-l@HOLYCROSS.EDU writes:
Barrie Karp sends the following reference, spotted in
The Spectator:
--
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Co-Editor,
NABOKV-L
All private editorial communications are
read by both co-editors.