Subject
Louise Brooks on VN (fwd)
Date
Body
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EDITORIAL NOTE. NABOKV-L thanks Ljuba Iouzina-Tarvainen
<etnen@online.tietokone.fi> for the following item
I presume the List subscribers might get interested in
the following quotation from the article by Tom Dardis
'What Lulu wanted' ('Vanity Fair' , April 1998, pp. 65-66).
The article is devoted to a screen siren of the twenties,
Louise Brooks, and cites her as saying the following
(with a dirty remark omitted):
In 1836 when Dickens married Kate Hogarth (20) he brought
sister Mary (16) whom he really loved, to live with them. When
Mary died in 1837, he nearly lost his mind. Upon reading
'The Old Curiousity Shop' 1840-41, old lady Hogarth (Kate
and Mary's mother) made him laugh when she said he didn't
fool her - he was Quilp and Mary was little Nell. (Nabokov
used this allusion (Quilty) in 'Lolita.) ...
... although this perversion is as common today as it was
when Ruskin and Lewis Carroll were on the prowl, the lips
of the victims and their mothers are sealed. We alone would
have made 'Lolita' a best seller in spite of the fact that Nabokov
... made Lolita the seducer.
Best wishes,
Ljuba Iouzina-Tarvainen
EDITORIAL NOTE. NABOKV-L thanks Ljuba Iouzina-Tarvainen
<etnen@online.tietokone.fi> for the following item
I presume the List subscribers might get interested in
the following quotation from the article by Tom Dardis
'What Lulu wanted' ('Vanity Fair' , April 1998, pp. 65-66).
The article is devoted to a screen siren of the twenties,
Louise Brooks, and cites her as saying the following
(with a dirty remark omitted):
In 1836 when Dickens married Kate Hogarth (20) he brought
sister Mary (16) whom he really loved, to live with them. When
Mary died in 1837, he nearly lost his mind. Upon reading
'The Old Curiousity Shop' 1840-41, old lady Hogarth (Kate
and Mary's mother) made him laugh when she said he didn't
fool her - he was Quilp and Mary was little Nell. (Nabokov
used this allusion (Quilty) in 'Lolita.) ...
... although this perversion is as common today as it was
when Ruskin and Lewis Carroll were on the prowl, the lips
of the victims and their mothers are sealed. We alone would
have made 'Lolita' a best seller in spite of the fact that Nabokov
... made Lolita the seducer.
Best wishes,
Ljuba Iouzina-Tarvainen