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Appendix 4 Szeftel's Papers on Lolita Included here are: a copy (probably a draft) of Szeftel's talk on Nabokov for the Book and Bowl, notes from 1960 on a study of Lolita, and the text of "Lolita at Cornell," which appeared in the Cornell Alumni .News in November 1980. 1. LOLITA. BOOK & BOWL, 13.XI.1958 Typed, with occasional deletions and handwritten additions. This is one ofthe earliest lengthy samples ofSzeftel's English prose now available, but one should bear in mind that it was a draft for a talk, and so was much less polished than were Szeftel's pieces intended for publication. Tremendous success, 11 weeks first on the best seller list. Even the Marine Corps read it, & children know about it (Community Center book shop, 13 year old boy; the Halloween Parade-4 year old "Lolita"). Reasons analogous to the appeal ofall forbidden fruit (it was, and still is, such a fruit) and to the great expectations ofreaders, who under other circumstances and for the same reason would be attracted rather by Micky Spillane than by Nabokov. I would like to know how far are they able to stay with the book, and how much do they understand from it. I would bet that many of them would be put hard to recognize their usual sex talk under Nabokov sophisticated story. The story is extremely well told, and even, if it were read only for literary reasons, it would deserve, and it would have had, many readers, and maybe, -still a place on the best seller list. Still, as a novel, it is not perfect. There is thinness, and prolixity at the same time, in its texture. It contains too much for a story (short), and not enough for a novel-I have in mind the main story. Otherwise, the book is rich, but much weight was te- given to extraneous happenings, many of which seem to have been added to the story expressly (on purpose). And it is not serprising it makes the impression of an expanded short story, and actually it is one. "Volshebnik" ["The Enchanter"] written and read to APPENDIX 4. SZEFTEL'S PAPERS ON LOLITA 137 Aldanov 20 years ago (my own conversation with Aldanov and Nabokovh it was a short story. See L. pp. 313-314. Film? Is there enough yarn for a film? Hollywood will not be embarrassed to add and to expand. A picaresque novel? Nabokov's opinion on Don Quixote. Is it an analytical novel? In a way it is, but it is an analysis ofa ph[y]siological , much more than ofa psychological drama. One may object, that there is no firm distinction between the physiology and the psychology of love. However, from the point ofview ofdrama, distinction there is. Physiology is monotonous, and repetitious, and we see it in "Lolita"; it cannot be compared as dramatic development to "Anna Karenina" or even "Madam Bovary ,["] and it lacks the unity of Benjamin Constant's "Adolphe" (on the other hand). So, it does not strike the reader either as a drama of sentiment or as a drama of a structured series of events. From the latter point of view, certain episodes seem to be adventitious: what is the relevance of the Rita episode in H. H.'s main story? It is an interesting digression, to be sure, but the novel could live without it. This criticism having been made, "Lolita," whether happily or unhappily composed as a novel, is an extremely happy piece of artistic writing, full of jewels of invention and form, and above all, intelligent in its every word. Is it a product of heart, or mainly that of the mind? It is rather the latter, but in its cerebrality it transcends intellect into splendid imagination (most creative). ([In Szeftel's hand] However, this creativeness bears much more on details than on the whole. Not only does "Lolita" remain a novellette inspite of its volume, but it is flat and not three dimensional. The world in which it moved and this includes Nabokov's picture of America / recalls a theatrical decoration without any depth of background.) Who [is] the hero, who himself told his story? H. H. "a salad of racial genes" (Swiss, of mixed French and Austrian descent), born in 1910. Hotel on the Riviera. Lycee in Lyon (1923-1927?). College in Paris and London (English literature-special field). Interprets French literature for Englishspeaking students and vice versa (a manual of French literature in English...

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