I sense that I might get agreement from list members that Mac Lean's
comments (i.e., "[Lolita is]
a portrait of Nabokov's own passion;" Nabokov's "stuffed-shirtism...is
a firewall against an unseemly urge") place him on an intellectual
level with P.J. O'Rourke and Hunter S. Thompson. Edward Allen, a
novelist, professor and Nabokovian currently at the University of South
Dakota, during a lecture in response to a question about the interview
excerpted below, stated, "Hunter S. Thompson is an idiot!" Here's a bit
from a P.J. O'Rourke interview with Hunter S Thompson from Rolling
Stone many years ago discussing Nabokov and his artistic methodology
(O'Rourke first, obviously):
Are there any writers who you think
[write about sex] effectively, honestly, dirtily? And honestly.
Well, I think that Nabokov could.
A beautiful writer.
Hell of a good writer. A friend of mine, Mike Solheim, was up in Sun
Valley [Idaho] back in the early '60s. He told me that Nabokov used to
come to the Sun Valley Lodge with an 11-year-old girl. He said it was
weirder than Lolita: "It's very nice to meet your niece, Mr. Nabokov."
Well, that goes back to the new-journalism question, about writing from
experience.
When you read it, you knew this was
from real experience. This was not Thomas Mann writing Death in Venice,
which seemed to be a student's idea of what a hopeless crush would be,
as if he'd observed someone go through it.
And the reason for that is, Nabokov was up at Sun Valley Lodge with an
11-year-old girl.
I'm afraid Lolita strictly fits into
the gonzo framework.
But, man, that's where the fun is. You know, why write about other
people's experiences?