At 05:09 PM 25/02/2007, you wrote:
>Well, Kerry, if you find yourself giggling to
relieve
>the tension as you read Nabakov's poetic reference
to
>a 14-year-old girl's vulva,
You've applied the motivation here, not me. In fact, I'm not
sure I said anything to imply why I might find Lolita
full-tilt funny. You don't know me, and you cannot read my
mind, yet you feel comfortable attributing a specific
motivation to my statement.
In reading fiction, the reader often has only the slimmest of
evidence to determine the motivations of characters,
narrators and even less for authors. This is particularly
true in Hardboil and Noir, where there's a strong stylistic
tendency to avoid internal dialogue and other character
revealing techniques except dialogue and behaviour. Much is
left to the reader, but if the author has one of his
characters say "I thought Lolita was hilariously funny from
beginning to end," do you believe the character, find the
character is not credible or decide that the author is
immoral?
> I'd say the humor is more
>in the reader than it is in the writing.
That may be. I'm still inclined to think that in art, meaning
is a collaboration between the author and the reader, and not
always a successful one.
> Just my
>opinion.
Well, that was my point to begin with.
Best, Kerry
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