Julian Connoly [replies to JM's :I suppose
that "the author" refers to Douglas M. Davis, not to Vladimir
Nabokov! This author's insistence on turning "Lolita" into
a story with a moral intention reminds me of Lionel
Trilling's essay..] "The 'author' referred to in the Davis
quotation is Nabokov. JC
JM: Thank you for the clarification. I've no way
to lay my hands on "On the Banks of Lake Lemon. Mr Nabokov
Reflects on 'Lolita' and Onegin," by Douglas M. Davis In The National
Observer (29 June 1964) to search
in its bibliography the information about when
and where VN's original sentence was published. Any
help?
RSGwynn: [to JM's this is a very good line of argumentation, considering Quilty
"as an invention within the invention"...] So HH wrote the Foreword under the pseudonym of John Ray, Jr., Ph.
D., and then conveniently died in prison a few days before his trial for the
figurative murder of CQ? More meta- than this fiction needs, I
think.
JM: Is it always necessary to resort to meta-fiction
while exploring the possible worlds of a novel? How shall we consider the status of
"Gradus" in "Pale Fire," or Kinbote's reports
about his actual delusions?
If Humbert Humbert
had simply been transfered from the psychopathic ward to an
insane asylum after committing a crime, his notes and John Ray,Jr.'s
foreword would fit into the ordinary scheme of the novel.
HH might even have killed some other guy who he thought had
been his nymphet's stalker and abductor (like J.Shade's
murder, instead of J.Goldsworth's, in PF, as another reference to VN's
father's assassination in Berlin?).