Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017854, Sun, 8 Mar 2009 16:01:58 +0000

Subject
Fwd: Lolita Paradox
Date
Body
Wrongly sent to listserv@... (lack of synch with entourage address-
file) RE-SEND to NABOKV-L

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Stan Kelly-Bootle <skellybootle@me.com> SWITCHED FROM ADDRESS,
> Entourage broken.
> Date: 8 March 2009 15:44:22 GMT
> To: LISTSERV@LISTSERV.ucsb.edu SORRY!
> Cc: Stan Kelly-Bootle <skb@bootle.biz>
> Subject: Lolita Paradox
>
> Lolita lurking in a 1940s Abbot[t?] & Costello sketch, caught on a
> WW2 movie-rerun TV last night (with those turncoat boogie-woogie
> Andrew Sisters switching from 8 to a solid 4 in a bar).
>
> C is bemoaning the fact that he is 40 years old but his “girl
> friend” is only 10 (Nymphet is not in use then?) Abbot tells C not
> to worry about the age difference:
>
> You’re now 4 times her age (L Carroll might say “Frice!”) , but in 5
> years time the ratio will be reduced to 3 (45/15). And in 20 years’
> time, incroyable, C is only twice as old (60/30). Abbot then
> consoles C that if he waits long enough, he’ll be the same age as
> his beloved. C says “How dumb! She won’t wait for me that long!”
>
> (VN would certainly be aware of this well-known age
> "paradox," [Limit (X+n)/X -> 1 as n -> infinity] and I'm exploring
> to see if he ever refers to it in any way. In his final LoL lecture,
> he fails to distinguish dull, "commonsense" arithmetic from the
> fantastic, counter-intuitive explorations of real mathematics. Sad,
> but not entirely his fault! See Speak, Memory for the childhood
> sicknesses that curtated an early budding mathematical potential.)
>
> What do we know of VN's movie and TV-watching habits? The C&A film
> with its breezy WW2 patriotism would have appealed, I'm sure.
>
> Of course, any close analogy of C&A's slapstick with VN's novel now
> disappears. The concept of "waiting" (HH for Lo, or vice versa)
> "don't enter into it."
>
> CTaH
>
> Alexey suggests that the above Cyrillic transliteration is not how
> Russians usually write "Stan." But I say that the CT[reversed
> epsilon]H he reports reflects the despised Southern English or even
> the boering Southern African pronunciation (Thet Sten hes e bleck
> het). Further, of course, I don't have the full Cyrillic-font glory
> on this keyboard (without some messing about).
>
>
>


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