I have followed with curiosity the discussion of swooners, bloomers, boners, and bloopers. My father's own Russian translation of Lolita, to my mind, should bear the greatest weight in any exegesis of the book's locutions, notwithstanding the various, often ingenious attempts of others. In the timorous 1940s, when "cleavage" was a federal issue and the shadow of an areola, to say nothing of -- omigosh! -- a naked nipple, would send a nation of schoolboys into onanistic paroxysms and blow the censors' fuses, fans of the female form and especially our frustrated doughboys, with their photo-papered barracks walls, had to make do with a suggestive substitute for the real deal -- the "sweater girl", as exemplified by posters of Jane Russell in The Outlaw. The idea was, of course, that an exaggerated but sweatered surrogate of the bre*st would provide the male libido with the ultimate swoon. Not only might the skin-tight substitute titillate even more subtly than an unclothed marble original, but the word "swoon" even contained an assonance with the word "sweater". Hence, invented by a master of the neologism, "swooners" and, in Russian,"modnye svitera" (stylish sweaters) -- all the more logical, since the word comes in a context of garments.

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