Lolita's Baedeker Pornographies

[cathy ramirez]

--- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
> As a point of reference see what the Britannica sez:
> 
> 
> pornography
> Encyclop?dia Britannica Article
> In 18th-century Europe there appeared the first
> modern works that were 
> both devoid of literary value and designed solely to
> arouse sexual 
> excitement. 

And so on. [snip] 

Nabokov, Vladimir. '[Afterword] On a Book Entitled
Lolita'. Lolita. London: Corgi, 1961 [orig. pub.
1955]. Pp 328-335.

Some interesting comments on Pornography in fiction
and some interesting comparisons with Detective
Fictions. 

Also interesting is Nabokov's comments about his
difficulties with inventing American. 

"it had taken me some forty years to invent Russia and
Western Europe, and now I was faced by the task of
inventing America." 

Nabokov, or at least HH, resorts to the Baedeker
guides. And to Amercan movies, movie magazines, radio,
and the like. 

HH on his American perambulations with his nymphet: 

"We had been everywhere (the longest passage in the
novel, if I'm remembering this right, is a
"Pynchonesque"  description of a their one year tour
through Baedeker America). We had really seen nothing.
And I catch myself thinking today that our long
journey had only defiled with a siuous trail of slime
the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by
then, in retropect, was no more to us than a
collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old
tires, and her sobs in the night---every night, every
night---the moment I feigned sleep." 


see, as well, for an exhaustive study of the Baedekers
(guides and persons). 

The Grim Phoenix: Reconstructing Thomas Pynchon 
By William M., Plater. (Out Of Print).    






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