Why You Should Read Lolita Before Traveling In the U.S.A.: American Travelers Are Lolita, and The TSA Is Humbert Humbert

In 1955 Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian emigre to the United States, published Lolita, a tale of a linguistically and aesthetically talented pedophile who runs off with his 12 year old step daughter, "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta" (first lines of Lolita).

Lolita was not published in the U.S. until 1958 due to its pornographic subject matter. Nabokov intensely hated cruelty to others and sexual deviants. So why did he write a book from the viewpoint of the pedophile, Humbert Humbert, who has conned several generations of readers and academics with the beautiful account of his love and "protection" of a 12 year old girl?

Nabokov hated evil. He had escaped the Bolsheviks in Russia, then later, escaped the Nazis with his wife of Jewish descent and their young son. They arrived in America and fell in love with it. Nabokov's wife, Vera, promptly purchased a gun to replace the one she had left behind in Europe, and learned to drive.

Nabokov, a seemingly absent-minded butterfly-chasing professor with an innocence about him that relied upon his wife's ferocity and protection liked to look at things from a very detailed and scientific perspective. He hated evil and studied it, dissected it, and understood its minutest detail. He climbed into the mind of evil when he wrote Lolita, shocking readers and enchanting millions with the beauty of his language.

Lolita was a triumph and proved how easily a population can be tricked into accepting evil, calling it beautiful, spending entire lifetimes studying its details without ever getting to its ultimate meaning. Anyone can tear apart an engine, or dissect a body and name the parts and figure out how they operate, but most cannot figure out the ultimate meaning -- why was this human body created, what is its purpose? How does one get into the mind of the creator via the act of dissection and cataloguing of the parts? It is impossible if one has no love or passion driving them. Creators and inventors generally have more love and passion which compels them to work harder and longer at something, creating a thing that changes the world for better.

Most inventions and creations were initially designed for the betterment of mankind or to add beauty or freedom. But many inventions are corrupted and used for evil purposes. The written word was made to better the world, but evil tries to corrupt it. The same goes for all art. We see technology abused, being used to make life harder rather than easier. Even Lolita, meant to show us evil from its own perspective, has been corrupted and adopted as a wonderful and dreamy tale by many gullible girls and joking young men, none of whom are aware that they have been artfully conned and that Nabokov proves his case of how evil survives and is accepted into the world.

Nabokov, the great enchanter and magician deceives many with his artistic slight of hand, keeping our focus upon the aesthetic, causing us to accept Humbert Humbert's defence because it is merely art and has no ultimate meaning or moral. If art is only aesthetic, then beauty has no meaning, thus what is the point of creating it?

Nabokov, a talented lepidopterist, studied butterflies and moths and was fascinated by their beauty. These creatures are patterned in ways that attract and enchant us, but also hide them from evil. Some butterflies blend in with their surroundings while others mimic dangerous animals to avoid being eaten. Nabokov learned that a butterfly's patterning is not merely aesthetic, but also enhances its survival. And this is what art's purpose is. Art is not merely aesthetic, but driven by truth and survival. If we cannot learn from art how to be wiser, better, kinder, and more graceful to others; to have pity, then art has no purpose, much as a shiny car has no meaning or purpose without an engine. A car is nice to look at, but without an engine it gets us nowhere.

The reason I expound upon Nabokov's Lolita and art is that more than ever America is deceived by the Humbert Humberts who claim they love us and want to protect us, while molesting us in various ways. We are made to pass through Naked Body Scanners, which undress us and expose us to dangerous mutagenic radiation. We are searched and groped by TSA officials as we travel the country, much as Lolita was groped by Humbert Humbert along the highways and byways of America. The stories now include "enhanced" searches that have left many feeling sexually violated after having had their penises, anuses, labia, and breasts felt by TSA screeners.

Now, does Humbert's love for Lolita feel nice and beautiful? Sure, he attacked the pornographic movie maker that ran off with Lolita, because that kind of art is immoral and degrading; but what of Humbert's protective and fatherly love for her? More than ever Nabokov's Lolita is important, for we all are her.

Was Lolita clean and innocent as the wind-driven snow? Was she faultless? No. But was that any excuse for Humbert Humbert to molest her? Was Lolita a kind and sweet child? No. She was obnoxious and sometimes crude. Was she more deserving of Humbert's sexual predation because of this? No. Americans are like this 12 year old girl and even though we are annoying and obnoxious and immoral it does not mean that we deserve to be treated by our states, by our fellows that work at TSA, as criminals in need of being stripped down or molested as we travel. Humbert Humbert protected Lolita as much as our airports are protecting us.

This is not beautiful, this is not America. This isn't even Nazi Germany. This is worse. This is worse for numerous reasons. Firstly, it's far worse and more abusive passing through United States airport security than in the rest of the world. America is supposed to be less abusive than the rest of the world. Second, the atrocities of the Nazis and American eugenicists and corporations in the first part of the 20th century are not so far removed from memory that we have forgotten them and what they looked like -- and what is going on in the United States right now resembles these past times.

The TSA's arrogance is only a small, yet extremely visible HINT as to what period of history we have regressed to. If a Naked Body Scanner, a long line in which one is divested of their possessions and shoes, hurried along, and subjected to physical searches which involve humble and silent endurance while one's anal and sexual reproduction areas are touched by uniformed employees of the government before being boarded upon crowded vehicles traveling somewhere doesn't wake us up and cause deja vu; then far worse than what happened in Nazi-controlled areas of Europe awaits us.

Rather than humbly lining up like the Jews, believing they'd eventually return home, we should stop cowering in embarrassment and start saying to hell with the "law," which breaks every law written into our soul. American travelers aren't terrorists and neither are visitors from other countries. The terrorists are the ones that apply for TSA jobs, and willingly carry out the orders of their superiors. If TSA employees were intelligent Americans they'd go on strike until they no longer were made to mistreat their fellow Americans. The terrorists are the ones groping for your wallet and now, your genitals. Soon, the women and children will be divided from the men, then the children from the women as enhanced airport security. It's already happening on an individual level. What next? Confiscation of Passport and Citizenship? Child sacrifice? When will their appetite be filled?

Wake up, America. Don't let the lives lost of the millions of Jews and others be for nothing. It's time to wake up out of our self-righteous and false morals. We are imperfect, we are obnoxious, we are all sinners, and we're not afraid of it. The Nazis were afraid of sin and imperfection and tried to hide it and eradicate it. We don't have to fall for that lie.

America wasn't founded as a utopia away from imperfection, but a place that would toughen up and accept it. That First Amendment isn't for the perfect or the safe people, but to protect the imperfect and those that speak unsafe things even if they are the truth and offend others. Our entire Constitution was designed to protect the so-called "impure," the "unsafe," the "sinful," the obnoxious, the rude, and the human. If the Constitution was only for the perfect and the moral, then our Founding Fathers would not have had any rights.

According, to Britain the American Revolutionaries were a bunch of terrorists, criminals, and tax evaders. And, according to our side of history they were brave, courageous, educated lovers of freedom. It all depends on who is writing history as to what the words "terrorist," "art," "pedophile," and "free" mean. We want to be on the right side of history. The trick is figuring out what the "right" side is. Usually, it's the side that is willing to break the law to show pity and hospitality to others when they are traveling in an inhospitable world.

America, this is not ancient Sodom where travelers were subjected to rape when visiting that town. Why are we forcing ourselves upon travelers? How does it protect us to treat citizens and visitors to this country this way? We are not Nazis, not Humbert Humbert, not Sodomites -- are we?

image: George Washington, Commander of the Terrorist Americans who threatened Britain's safety and health, also known as The Father Of Our Country, The United States Of America.

A Guide To Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody

Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody is like a piece of great literature and needs to be "read" like one. This means that the viewer needs to have an ability to make connections with other literature and with their heart. If the reader is able only to make superficial connections they will come away with the impression that there is no ultimate meaning to life at the end of the movie.

Back in my university days it was very common for the students to forget that "Every great writer is a great deceiver" as well as a "storyteller, teacher, enchanter--but [that] it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer" (Vladimir Nabokov "How to be a Good Reader or Kindness to Authors").

And thus, I had to sit through many a class while my fellow students destroyed literature with their ignorance and cruelty. The youngest and most beautiful girls would swoon at Nabokov and Wallace Stevens and say it was so beautiful and wonderful, drooling sick and sugary syrup from their mouths, but never understanding exactly why the literature was beautiful. I once, heard a beautiful girl, accustomed to being thought intelligent in high school, tell the professor that she loved T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland because it was dreamy and had mermaids.

And then, there is the intellectual student. These are the ones with dour faces and black-rimmed glasses and mouths that know big words. These never understand anything and all great literature is nihilistic and nothing to them. They drone on, explaining why the literature was great -- because it means nothing and has no meaning (actually, they're too blind to know meaning when they run into it). These go on to power positions in politics or universities where they attempt steal the joy and meaning of learning and living from the rest of us.

These two types of "readers," the sugary girls and the educated idiots are bad readers and will not understand Mr. Nobody, but will shape nearly all opinion about it.

"the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense"(Vladimir Nabokov "Kindness to Authors").

Here are a few connections I've noticed upon completing a first viewing. There must be much more:

Literature:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"Annabelle Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe
Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov
The Odyssey by Homer
Bible

Movies:
Groundhog Day with Bill Murry
It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart
The Matrix with Keanu Reeves
Dead Man with Johnny Depp
The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland

Symbolism:
Water
Muses
Trains
Tunnels
Colors

And ultimately, these connections to the wider universe are only road markers, pointing us to the meaning of Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody, which is about the most important connection of all.

Mr. Nobody, Jaco Van Dormael's Sublime Universe

In the year 2092 Nemo Nobody is 118 years old and the last mortal human. A journalist asks Nemo what life was like back when humans were mortal and Nemo replies:

"There were cars that polluted. We smoked cigarettes. We ate meat. We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful."

I haven't enjoyed a movie as much as Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody in years. It's like Vladimir Nabokov on screen. Brilliant, provoking, intelligent, playful, beautiful, pitiful, awful and awesome -- Sublime.

The New Puritans: Socialists

"I think that here lies the sense of literary creation: to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in the far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade" (Vladimir Nabokov, A Guide to Berlin, 1925).

Those "kindly mirrors of future times" are also the forgetful mirrors or the fun-house distortion mirrors. As a person grows old and forgetful, so too does the world. In the early 1920s of Berlin, Nabokov had not yet experienced the Corporate-Religious fanatacism of the National Socialist German Worker's Party and its push towards a hygienic world, its scientific cure for cancer, and poverty....not yet.

Soon enough Nabokov and millions of others would think back to those times when the ordinary, the everyday trifle and jacket would be something to yearn for; remembering them as elegant and rich.

During the National Socialist German Worker's Party's reign science was the state's chosen superstition and religion. Nearly all doctors and scientists eagerly signed on in support of this wonderful lie. Even before the Jews were rounded up, the elderly, the deformed, and the war veterans were quietly destroyed. Imperfect babies were euthanized and issued death certificates which gave no indication that the child died of anything other than natural causes.

Homes and sanitariums for the invalid, elderly, and war veterans had gas chambers installed. Hundreds were gassed and incinerated at a time. The local villager's only complaints were in regard to the nuisance of the smoke and the dust it left upon things. These early gas chambers were the model upon which the death camps for Jews and other competition against the state's corporate interests were based.

Health was all important. The science, and Hitler's Socialist Worker's agreed. Organic and back-to-earth natural diets were all the rage. Hitler was a vegetarian because he was sure that it was healthier and kinder to animals. Yes, even animal rights were a beloved cause of the German Socialists. Evidently, they found it easier to get along with animals than with humans.

Gold watches were awarded by Hitler to those who had quit smoking cigarettes; an unhygienic habit associated with Jews, Indians, Gypsies, Blacks, jazz musicians, intellectuals, and any other enemy of the healthy Aryan pater familias. Passive smoke is so very destructive to genetic purity. But, of course, the smoke of bodies spewing out of an incinerator's chimney has absolutely no carcinogenic or dangerous effects whatsoever, or so the scientifically pure Germans seemed to believe. The Nazi smoking bans seemed to ignore their own addiction to the burning blood of innocents.

In a society that loved the male body, glorified it and worshipped it in all its neo Roman health, women were relegated the role of necessary for breeding. Women weren't permitted to smoke cigarettes for fear they would ruin the future purity of the Aryan race. A woman's place was in the home worshipping her husband who enjoyed male perfection more than her.

That's right, male self-love was a proud quality of the Socialists. We are told that homosexuals were sent to the same camps as the Jews and Gypsies. The effeminate and flimsy homosexuals were sent to the camps because they did not meet the Roman-Socialist ideal of maleness. Big, strong, male Socialists were not imprisoned. But, of course, those big, healthy gorgeous males used the effeminate homosexuals to push forth much of their agenda, scientific research, and information gathering before rounding them up.

I have watched this Roman-Socialist male rising the past few years. I have watched pseudo-science rising, and now the corrupted governments invested in the pharmaceutical and war contractor corporations.

I have always wondered why the people of Germany allowed Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party to accrue so much power and to kill so many people. Now I understand. Because the wheel has turned and now we are back where we were when Hitler came to power. We are as blind, self-righteous, and deluded by propaganda as the German people.

I always wondered why the religious and church community was largely silent. Now I know why. They are a large part of the problem. If it were not for the churches support of false righteousness and perfection, male glorification, female subservience, scientific falsehoods funded by corporations, and fear of non-members, Socialism's religious fanaticism could not gain a stronghold in any country.

There is a false belief within much of the religious community that they are different, at odds with the rest of the "liberal" and immoral world. They seem unable to see that nearly every belief and "moral" value they espouse are exactly the same ones those outside of their building also hold to.

The church operates as a large corporation every time it goes out to "save the world," and gain converts/customers. What happens when a new corporation/church comes along and offers a new product, or enacts a hostile takeover such as early Roman Catholicism and its offshoot, Islam have done? The customers/converts are compelled to remain loyal to that product or be killed for being "immoral." One way of creating religious loyalty is by pushing fear and ignorance upon the people. Government, corporations, and religions are all similar in their modi operandi.

We have come full circle and are seeing a melding of government, corporation, and church. There is a religious fervor in the air. The word "moral" drops down upon our heads after the little birdie chirps it in our ear. Sacrifice is spoken of and a return to harsh "realism" is being advertised as more favorable than the old mercy. We are told to give back a portion to the Lord/Government and he'll spread it around for his great projects, because he can't possibly act out his great miracles and works without our money. Yes, our god is an awesome god.

Satan and sorcery are everywhere and in everyone and the only way to distinguish between witches and holy ones is to put them to the test. If a person can't pass the surveillance camera, the thumb scan, body scanner, breath test, or Tom A. Swift's Electric Rifle (Taser) they are a witch.

We are living in fervently religious times, whether one admits it or not. The problem is that no one will admit it, and that most of us are socialists and fanatical religionists. We are greatly deceived and ignorant. We do not see how many we harm and murder in our self-righteousness. Not one person is innocent. Each time we tithe (or pay taxes or zakat, whatever one chooses to call it) to the government that money is invested in addictive and dangerous pharmaceuticals or in the war industry. The high priests are sacrificing lambs to a strange god with our money.

I am no peacenik or homeopathic zealot, but when war becomes profitable for local and federal governments because of the monetary profits and power to be made I find it impossible to support it. War should profit no one. When the pharmaceutical industry is also big business for the government it is no longer about health, but about banning competition in order to gain profits and power.

When Jesus came to the Jews a couple thousand years ago many of them couldn't believe it. He wasn't a king, a religious leader, a wealthy businessman. But He was a threat to kings, religious leaders, and wealthy businessmen.

Now, there is talk of the anti-christ within extremist factions of Socialist Islam and Socialist Christianity. Each of these groups has defined who the anti-christ is, how he looks, and how he should be fought. The Jews did the same thing a few thousand years ago with their expectations of their Savior. Most people won't recognise the anti-christ because they won't believe that he looks exactly like the reflection in the mirror and the person next to them in line at the check-out counter, and the person at the pulpit. How can we recognize anti-christ when we can't recognize Christ?

Jesus looks like His people, and so does the anti-christ. The anti-christ claims it can save us with every ban, health ordinance, prescription, technology, program, war, law, airbag, bailout, election, prison, school, police officer, carbon offset, treaty, condom, vaccine, riot, demonstration, tax, insurance policy, and bag of gold.

There is no money or power gained by extending mercy and forgiveness. It's not good business and is unfair, to those that have worked hard at perfection. How can a pharmaceutical company sell its pills to a person that forgives and is forgiven? It can't because the stress caused by bitterness and fear isn't there. How can the war and law enforcement corporations profit from mercy and forgiveness? How can the religions of the world profit from a forgiven population?

"For I desire mercy and not
sacrifice,
And the knowledge of God
more than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6)

If we are to "portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness" for posterity to look fondly upon, we must see the world around us in this time first. There will be no kindly looking back upon us if we are cruel and blind, if we are witch hunters, accusers, and destroyers of our fellow humans in the name of purity. The picture we want painted for posterity is one of "fragrant tenderness," not corporate-religious socialism.

Blackstone's Ratio: Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer (also espoused by the Hebrew Patriarch Abraham, Maimonides, Fortescue, Increase Mather, Ben Franklin....

Socialists and Witch Finders General like to twist it to "better than ten innocents suffer than one guilty man escape."

image: American school children saluting as they recite The Pledge of Allegiance, pre 1943. Before 22 Dec, 1942 U.S. school children saluted the flag in a manner common to socialists around the world. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by a Baptist minister and Christian Socialist named Francis Bellamy. The western world was proudly Socialist once before and is once again. And like the Nazis we don't think of ourselves as racists or segregationist or evil. We don't see that the only difference between our time and the past is a few years and the word Nazi.

Is The Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

The past week I have been reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Stacy Schiff's Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), and Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind. I have not finished Solzhenitsyn. I was overwhelmed by the interrogation techniques used by the Russians due to the fact that many of these are being used by the local law enforcement upon my fellows. Sometimes, the truth is too dark and breathtaking when it removes the shiny curtain of imagined freedom to reveal the very evil one thinks cannot possibly exist in their own community.

Interestingly, these three books go together quite well and I cannot help but think that it was ordained by some greater will that they should have been brought together for my pleasure. Schiff's Vera shows us how to overcome evil, slipping through like water in the hand of Russian and German hatred; and live quietly, yet brightly in the persistent pursuit of one's love. If I could rename Schiff's Vera it would be And Then She Typed, Then She Transcribed, Then She Took Dictation, Then She Translated. Vera was not written how I would have written her, but it sure makes one think about typewriters, vehicles, and words, drive and fingers.

Nasar's biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr. tied the trio together nicely. Nash makes a perfect metaphor for our current society and how it has become sick with schizophrenia. Everything that Nash suffered as an individual schizophrenic describes modern culture, except there is no sanitarium for the masses, and there won't be a Nobel Prize.

And now, I'm looking into propaganda, which is fairly dry when one has learned most of this information from reading good literature. Great writers expose their readers to the world of lies, truth, and ways of thinking critically. A great reader doesn't always believe the narrator if they know what's good for them.

Here is a quote on how propagandists play with numbers:

"'2 out of 5 fatal automobile accidents was due to drinking. 33% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had been drinking. 24% of the pedestrians involved in fatal accidents had been drinking. Therefore, alcohol intoxication is a major cause of automobile accidents and drunk driving must be dealt with harshly'

That logic sounds impressive, but it's completely wrong. Consider the reverse logic:

'3 out of 5 fatal automobile accidents did not involve drinking. 67% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had not been drinking. And 76% of the pedestrians involved in accidents had not been drinking. Therefore, sobriety is undoubtedly the major cause of fatal automobile accidents, and sober driving must be outlawed immediately, and punished harshly'" ("Propaganda and Debating Techniques," A. Orange).

I don't know if we should be bandying those sober numbers about. A mother of a child who died at the hands of a sober driver may get ideas and form M.A.S.S. (Mothers Against Sober Sinners). We are at such a precarious point in our schizophrenic world that people would actually support banning sober drivers.

This is why we need to stop feeding our emotions and listening to those nasty adverts featuring the sobbing wife of a drunk husband who killed a father of a small and darling child with his car. It's pure emotion designed to pass a law which will eventually lead to another law and another until everyone is a criminal, and made to pay penance for farting and belching, or simply looking odd while driving.

I wish that those, especially the women, convicted of DUI and put through the illegal and humiliating treatment at the local gulag would put out an advert exposing the inhumane treatment they were subjected to.

At Least We'll Be Elegantly Destitute

"[T]he spirits of Americans are hitting record lows. People are becoming desperate to find something--anything--that will make them feel better, to do something to pick themselves up........We forecast that something will be 'Elegance' in its many manifestations. The trend will begin with fashion............a move toward quality and individuality--and will spread through all the creative arts, as the need for beauty trumps the thrill of the thuggish. A strong, do-it-yourself aspect will make up for reduced discretionary income, as personal effort provides the means for affordable sophistication" (Gerald Celente, "Breaking Point: Top Trends 2010").

I'm forecasting that big, bulky, top heavy and scruffy scarves will give way to trim and neat neck gear of finer fabrics.

Moccasins and ballet flats will give way to the penny loafer, and middle-aged men in the entertainment industry will stop with that affected froufy frousle-tousle hair do.

Plaid is in and will continue for several years because it is colorful in a drab world, classic, versatile, individual, and unpretentious. Some may choose plaid for its counterculture connotations and others may choose it for the association with that rebel William Wallace.

Will women return to skirts as every day wear, and men to ties? No. Women will not give up the pants, and men will not don the tie as an every day piece of clothing. It won't happen. Carhartt will happen.

And as a warning, even in the midst of the revival of elegance, poshlost will still thrive, and as usual, those who believe they are being elegant will only exhibit poshlost at its pinnacle. It may take a full body scan to expose who is elegant and who is carrying the element of poshlost. Of course, the truly elegant will not submit to a full body scan.

Poshlost:(Russian) vulgarity, triviality, banality, promiscuity, etc. "[T]he falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever..." (Vladimir Nabokov). "[O]ver concern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know" (Nabokov). "[C]omplacent mediocrity and moral degeneration" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn).

"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" (Bogart to Rains, Casablanca)

Intoxicated

Somewhere between Vitruvius, Sam Johnson, and a little sewing box made of whalebone, and the incessant interruptions of Beowulf I found what I was looking for. The secret recipe for Old English ale.

Those that know me may remember the story of the English Party I once attended. I was very lucky to be visiting an acquaintance during the time of the annual English Party at an old English university. Those not affiliated with the English Department are not generally invited to the gathering, but my friend, an English student, wanted to show me something I had never seen and never will again, and thus broke the rules.

Evidently, it was obvious I was not a professor or a student, but an outsider; a foreigner because all there politely refused to engage in conversation with me. I was not bothered by this because I was there to sight see and enjoy the privileged event, not to mention that I had commonly experienced this reaction upon my native soil in the windowless and cold fluorescent confines of the local Institution of Higher Learning on the hill. In fact, I have even been known to take pleasure in the annoyance I cause certain crusty curmudgeons (Oh, Carol!).

I had a drink or two of the ale from the refreshment table which was kept brimming with good things by a very courteous and polite staff of stiff young men and women who offered up napkins with each glass of spirits or food. I always thanked them, set the napkin down and left with the drink condensing impolitely in my hand, and wandered around the great old room with its tall windows and ancient wood beams as it hummed very smoothly and warmed me in its yellow lamp lit glow.

If one has ever been to a perfect party or gathering they will remember that feeling of warmth, relaxation, and calm that emanates through the room. And even if the others gathered there are friendly, it is nice to find a quiet corner alone for a moment to watch and listen and absorb the vibrations and light into one's being, because it is like a warm blanket of joy and happiness which will not reoccur any time soon. I cannot explain this feeling of extreme and perfect contentment in the very moment one is in, but I do know that one must ingest it to experience it. That as why there is a gracious refreshment table.

During the course of the English Party I commented to a dark lady near me that there was an enchantment in the air and asked if this was a common thing in England. She told me that it was and that every village had the enchantment and that in some places it was so strong that even the rocks could fly.

Certainly, whatever it was I felt that night was very powerful and highly intoxicating. I do recall that the professors seemed to be wary of the younger students who became overly intoxicated and boisterous, but that it was understood this youthful lack of discipline and manners was only a passing phase, soon outgrown in another year at the university.

I did not think on that party for some time or of the puzzle of the enchantment (which I, a foreigner, had caught, much to the chagrin of the professors), but somehow Vitruvius and his Phi, Leonardo and his Golden Man, and a whale bone box reminded me that hidden away is a hoard of treasure, a highly valuable and volatile bottle of enchanted ale which only a few have tasted or dare to admit they have tasted. And I managed to spirit a bottle of the ale out of that country and home with me. Perhaps, rocks can fly.

"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art" (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)....and, really, I am.

The Original Gold Second

"We speak of one thing being like some other thing when what we are really craving to do is to describe something that is like nothing on earth" (Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister)

Like. But isn't. Not exact, not the thing itself. Like.

How does one explain, give the meaning, not a mere semblance of the meaning? This is the ache and the yearning, the chain of being a human on earth. It's as if; like being a prisoner bolted to a cell with a heavy chain that allows one to get near the key, get near the door, nearly touch it....but not quite.

"Certain mind pictures have become so adulterated by the concept of 'time' that we have come to believe in the actual existence of a permanently moving bright fissure (the point of perception) between our retrospective eternity which we cannot recall and the prospective one which we cannot know. We are not really able to measure time because no gold second is kept in a case in Paris but, quite frankly, do you not imagine a length of several hours more exactly than a length of several miles?" (Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister)

There is no "gold second" to measure, although we do measure time with those adulterated "mind pictures." Somehow, we forget the meaning and imagery used to make meaning, which due to our forgetfulness look adulterated, unfamiliar. Because these pictures appear foreign to our present we say they are of another time. Why this is, I cannot tell.

When we read Shakespeare we must pull out our history and dictionary to understand what his meaning is....because the images, the likenesses have become adulterated. Would a gold second fade and disappear this way? Is it the gold second, the meanings that have faded, or is it us? Did someone drop the gold second and did the janitor sweep it under the display case? Are we reading backwards?

If time is moving forwards and our meaning, our images are only copies of other things; like something else that came before, then the future is only a copy of a copy of a copy, and so on. We are like wine that has been watered down, stretched out, and made clear.

Where is that original cask of wine, that golden first, and how good must it have been to have lasted all this while, after all of these adulterations?

Clippings and Letters

I have now been a week at salt water, & though I think I have got some good
by it yet I have some secret fears--that this business will be dangerous if not fatal.-- (Rabbie's letter to his father-in-law, James Armour, 10 July 1796)

"A newspaper clipping mentioned that the State Entomologist had retired to become Adviser on Shade Trees, and one wondered whether this was not some dainty oriental euphemism for death" (Bend Sinister, Vladimir Nabokov)

And on the other side of these are moths and mothers.

"to pass from the comedy of thought to that of action"

In the summer I make hay while the sun shines, barely reading or writing, but always a tinge of guilt prods at me for leaving these muscles to atrophy.

In the fall, in the spring I read again, starting with Vladimir Nabokov. It has to be him because I am a thief, as he is, and before I can lift my own weight I must have another lift me for awhile. The proverbial Standing On The Shoulders of Giants.

I know that I am weak when I fall into the abyss of worldly waste, especially political props. Tyrants, despots, money managers, peddlers of fear and other unimaginative destroyers. Of course, these types fill the pages of history and literature, but it takes imagination to embellish them and make them into great literature, because, really, they are small and stunted.

And so, I have begun my autumn reading with a reread of Nabokov's Bend Sinister. I've barely made it across the bridge. I'm not sure I can make it to the end because it makes me cry and I despise the Toad. But I do so love Nabokov's generous embellishments of undeserving creatures, his gift.

And then, there is Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, which all who love Nabokov should read. Especially, Chapter XIV "Worth the Consideration Of Those To Whom It May Prove Worth Considering."

The entirety of Chapter XIV is absolutely gorgeous and Nabokovian....but, how can this be? Nabokov was not even a glimmer in God's eye when Melville conceived this. Perhaps, Nabokov is Melvillian. Or perhaps, genius and creativity have a similar hue no matter the author.

Some quotes from Chapter XIV of The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville:

As the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking forwards, so the present must consist of one glancing backwards.

True, it must be urged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully see to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look for, than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency should be preserved. But this, though at first blush, seeming reasonable enough, may upon a closer view, prove not so much so. For how does it couple with another requirement--equally insisted upon, perhaps--that, while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention, yet, fiction based on fact should never be contradictory to it; and is it not a fact, that, in real life, a consistent character is a rara avis?

If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception and those of life. As elsewhere, experience is the only guide here, but as no man can be coextensive with what is, it may be unwise in every case to rest upon it.

But let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce her duck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors, some may hold, have no business to be perplexing readers with duck-billed characters.

But though there is a prejudice against inconsistent characters in books, yet the prejudice bears the other way, when what seemed at first their inconsistency, afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out to be their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing so much as in this very particular. They challenge astonishment at the tangled web of some character, and then raise admiration still greater at their satisfactory unraveling of it; in this way throwing open, sometimes to the understanding of even school misses, the last complications of that spirit which is affirmed by its Creator to be fearfully and wonderfully made

Ah, I love it. Good literature always points the finger at me, poking and prodding, making me laugh and cry with pity. It makes me human again.

The Bard Reads Nab

My favorite chapter of Vladimir Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading is chapter 8. It's superb.

"As far back as I can remember myself--and I remember myself with lawless lucidity, I have been my own accomplice, who knows too much, and therefore is dangerous."

"But then I have long since grown accustomed to the thought that what we call dreams is semi-reality, the promise of reality, a foreglimpse and a whiff of it; that is they contain, in a very vague, diluted state, more genuine reality than our vaunted waking life which, in its turn, is semi-sleep, an evil drowsiness into which penetrate in grotesque disguise the sounds and sights of the real world, flowing beyond the periphery of the mind--as when you hear during sleep a dreadful insidious tale because a branch is scraping on the pane, or see yourself sinking into snow because your blanket is sliding off."

"It exists, my dream world, it must exist, since, surely there must be an original of the clumsy copy."

"When still a child, living still in a canary-yellow, large, cold house where they were preparing me and hundreds of other children for secure nonexistence as adult dummies, into which all my coevals turned without effort or pain; already then, in those accursed days, amid rag books and brightly painted school materials and soul-chilling drafts, I knew without knowing, I knew without wonder, I knew as one knows oneself, I knew it even more clearly than I do now."

More "Kindness to Authors," or, how to expand the universe

"We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge." (Vladimir Nabokov, "How to be a Good Reader or Kindness to Authors")

My first instinct is to argue with this opinion, but then, I remember that this could skew an entire work. It's entirely limiting to believe that everything is about us--it's "geocentric" and medieval. I didn't create the work, the universe of the creator's mind and so why should it revolve around me? The earth revolves around the sun, and the sun gives warmth to me, not I to it.

I also know that when a work can be examined objectively, as if from above, or from a distance; it allows a fuller appreciation of an author's talent. Every great work is personal and evokes a personal reaction in the reader, but the truth of an author's meaning cannot be known until the reader is objective. I cannot remember how T.S. Eliot put this objective reading, but he too, observed that this made for a better reader and even author.

I remember that it made one of my professors, "The Black Hole," very angry to agree with Eliot. It upset her that it made the world bigger and awe-inspiring. Being objective, actually draws the reader nearer the new world, and evokes empathy for others, rather than judgment based upon personal bitterness and bias. Modern readers are supposed to carry with them through the pages, a bucket of their personal waste, scattering it amongst the text, contaminating the green grass. Modern readers must base everything upon the socio-economic, pretending to be scientific and advanced, and benevolent, stomping uninvited like Mrs. Pardiggle into the brickmaker's home, leaving their meaningless tracts, while ignoring the human soul in the corner cradling her dead child.

If Mrs. Pardiggle had been more objective, had stood back and looked at this new world which she did not understand, did not write the rules for, perhaps, she would not have made the dark residence darker, perhaps, she would have noticed the mother and her baby. Perhaps, she would have been pierced in the heart. But Mrs. Pardiggle, like many readers is geocentric, thinks only of her own world, her own rules, her own ideas, and as a limited reader, she makes judgements based upon her small universe. Mrs. Pardiggle believes that she is advanced and benevolent, and must impose her limited knowledge upon others. Where she goes, the world contracts. Where she goes, divides and bias spring up.

And if we are limited and un objective readers, we may miss out on some important events. We may miss out on saviors, and springs, Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy. We may look at literature as only dark rooms in decay in which it is our duty to leave our own meaningless words, but not as a place where a soul may touch us and improve ours. Does the reader improve literature or does literature improve the reader?

And this is my thought/argument/defence of the day. Enough.

A Bleak House Litany

Here are some quotes, snippets, and observations pertaining to Charles Dicken's Bleak House, which I have only recently finished.

On false benevolence: "rapacious benevolence"
"Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear that the only infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor, and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat"

On hope: "long-deferred hopes"
"the sickness of hope deferred"
"don't found a hope or expectation on the family curse!"

On our earthly condition: "perplexed and troublous valley of the law"
"the pernicious cause of so much sorrow and ruin"
"I was born into this unfinished contention"
"But it can't last forever. We shall come on for a final hearing, and get a judgment in our favor"
"and these family affairs smoothed over--as, Lord! Many other family affairs equally has been, and will be, to the end of time"

On making people our trust, rather than money and false hope: "I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!"

Behind every great man is a great woman, who knows her husband's mind: "give him my opinion. You know it. Tell him what it is"

On the end of an era: "as if all the cousins had been changed into leaves"

And following are some notes from Vladimir Nabokov's "Bleak House" lecture which incidentally, follows the lecture on Jane Austen's Mansfield Park:

"In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort in order to join the ladies in the drawing room. In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port. We had to find an approach to Jane Austen and her Mansfield Park. I think we did find it and did have some degree of fun with her delicate patterns, with her collection of eggshells in cotton wool. But the fun was forced. " This is always how I have felt about Austen, as if I am forcing my enjoyment of her. Even when I have found her brilliant, I have found no sparkle. She is so highly restrained. One must wonder if she had been planted in the Garden, instead of Eve, would the Apple ever have been bitten into? Austen herself would not have picked the Apple, although she would have spent a chapter engaged in the impropriety of it, the poor manners, and given us witty observations of Adam and Eve's poor breeding, and called it---Mansfield Park!

"Let us not forget that there are people who have devoted to Jane all their lives, their ivy-clad lives. "

"The study of the sociological or political impact of literature has to be devised mainly for those who are by temperament or education immune to the aesthetic vibrancy of authentic literature, for those who do not experience the telltale tingle between the shoulder blades."

"Lady Dedlock is redeemed by suffering, and Dostoevski is wildly gesticulating in the background."

"Skimpole and, of course, the Smallweeds and Krook are completely the devil's allies. And so are the philanthropists, Mrs. Jellyby for instance, who spread misery around them while deceiving themselves that they are doing good though actually indulging their selfish instincts."

"Literature consists, in fact, not of general ideas but of particular revelations, not of schools of thought but of individuals of genius. Literature is not about something: it is the thing itself, the quiddity."

"[W]ithout the words there would have been no vision.....the image had to have a voice too in order to live."

"A writer might be a good storyteller or a good moralist, but unless he be an enchanter, an artist, he is not a great writer. Dickens is a good moralist, a good storyteller, and a superb enchanter...."

"[T]he art of not only creating people but keeping created people alive within the reader's mind throughout a long novel--this of course, is the obvious sign of greatness."

And this is for fun from Nabokov's "How to be a Good Reader, or Kindness to Authors":

"[I] suggested a little quiz--ten definitions of a good reader, and from these ten the students had to choose four definitions that would combine to make a good reader....Select four answers to the question what should be a good reader:
1. The reader should belong to a book club.
2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine.
3. The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle.
4. The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none.
5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie.
6. The reader should be a budding author.
7. The reader should have imagination.
8. The reader should have memory.
9. The reader should have a dictionary.
10. The reader should have some artistic sense."

Oh, yes, I do have my own opinions on Bleak House, but I've exhausted myself on other's opinions, and shall not venture further at the moment.