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Re: Oriental Skrotomoff
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Re: [NABOKV-L] Oriental SkrotomoffStan Kelly-Bootle: Budding English schoolboy comics have always punned on the Russian 'ov'='off' ending...It's misleading to call these wordplays puerile ... I swear to all Ye Gods that few Anglophones educated in an English primary school would look beyond the obvious Scrotum-off pun blaring loud from VN's Skrotomoff. The very 'off' spelling leads us away from real Russian and towards a punning, castrational climax. (Usually, the Russian ending is transliterated er er literally as '-ov' regardless of the phonetics.)
JM: Nabokov, at first, signed himself Nabokoff ( we find offers of Davidoff cigars or Smirnoff vodka, too) and this is why the "Skrotomoff" thing totally escaped me (actually it's never been a topmost preoccupation for me)
In my opinion many such wordplays are puerile - or juvenile, or trivial. On that matter I side with Edmund Wilson (although Simon Karlinski's explanation about Russian punning mollified me somewhat). The "Skrotomoff" was rather adequate for Percy or Greg when reporting about their fight with Van, though...
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JM: Nabokov, at first, signed himself Nabokoff ( we find offers of Davidoff cigars or Smirnoff vodka, too) and this is why the "Skrotomoff" thing totally escaped me (actually it's never been a topmost preoccupation for me)
In my opinion many such wordplays are puerile - or juvenile, or trivial. On that matter I side with Edmund Wilson (although Simon Karlinski's explanation about Russian punning mollified me somewhat). The "Skrotomoff" was rather adequate for Percy or Greg when reporting about their fight with Van, though...
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/