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>...VN's negative views on detective stories are prominent here, but
>he makes an exception of J&H: it's lame as a detective story, and
>even tasteless as a parable or allegory. "It has, however, its own
>special enchantment if we regard it as a phenomenon of style."
I wonder how Nabokov would have liked The Nutty Professor (the Eddie
Murphy version), a travesty of Jekyll and Hyde. Personally I found it
one of the funniest things I've ever seen, a sidesplitter, and true
regarding Jekyll's underlying motive.
But enchanting and stylistically phenomenal as it is, The Nutty
Professor is LOW clomedy, about as low as it gets; full of fat jokes
and fart jokes--done with genius.
Did VN care for slapstick or for "gross, robust humor, extravagance
of caricature, bold naturalism" i.e. the "Rabelasian"? And what did
he think of Rabelais? And what would he have thought of Borat, a
still more gross etc, and even funnier, film than Nutty? Would he
have found it hilarious, or a vulgar bore, or neither?
The Jerry Lewis version of Nutty was made in 1963, but though it
presented a serious, or rather antiserious, treatment of the J & H
theme, I find it hard to imagine VN seeing it or enjoying it. Or am I
wrong?
Walter Miale