1. Errata:  My edition of "Strong Opinions" is from Vintage International, and not Everyman's, as I informed in a former posting.

 

2. SKB wrote: "What is STRANGE, though, is that VN, who accused Miller, Joyce, et al. of over-explicit, plumpen 'smut,' would have 'dug the dirt' so blatantly. Of course, be told again, it's all CONtext -- and the hardest idiomatic problem is judging how 'offensive' language shifts nice'n'naughty over space, time, and culture. Sweet old ladies in France use 'con' as readily as G Brassens."

 

IN a SO, 1965, interview with Robert Hughes, Nabokov plays with Joseph Conrad, stating that he differs "Conradically" (page 57).

Perhaps in the same irreverent verbal mood he soon criticizes pornography as: " And the popular mixture of pornography and idealistic humbuggery makes me positively vomit"  (page 58). 

Sometimes I wonder how many admirers of Dylan Thomas' poetry will try to find in a map the quaint little village of Llareggub ( Under Milk Wood) ...

Jansy