Re: RARA-AVIS: RE : Lolita and noir

From: Kerry J. Schooley ( gsp.schoo@murderoutthere.com)
Date: 23 Feb 2007


Humour is highly subjective of course. Personally one of the things I find funniest in fiction or life is the contortions people will twist themselves into when they discover that they are the very embodiment of the problems they take most seriously (which tend to be categorized under the headings of "Evil" or "Immoral.") Some of these things are just plain silly, like pants on piano legs; others more darkly so, like a picture of J. Edgar Hoover in drag. Imagine an entire career, more, an entire Government department dedicated to denying the essence of that photograph. Evil certainly, but hilariously so.

Of course I seldom see the humour when I'm caught in similar situations taking myself too seriously, which I suppose is what makes humour so subjective. Knowing it's just me, I hope you'll forgive me Patrick if I say that your argument below is one of the funniest things I've read on RARA AVIS or anywhere else, in some time.

Thanks, Kerry

At 04:51 PM 22/02/2007, you wrote:

>Well, Bob, clearly you don't get my meaning at all.
>Thompson and Highsmith are being droll in those
>instances and their descriptions are funny. Kevin
>Weeks' description of moving victims in Brutal: the
>untold story of my life inside Whitey Bulger's Irish
>Mob, was not very funny at all. Humbert's comparison
>of Lolita's desire for him to her desire for lunch, a
>Humburger to a Hamburger was somewhat funny but it
>doesn't mark the book as a "very funny book."
>Personally, I think people who want to pigeonhole
>Lolita as a "funny book" are embarrassed by the fact
>that Nabakov used Lolita to undermine his readers'
>sensibilites. It's a great novel written from the
>perspective of America's most reprehensible type of
>criminal. It puts that criminal in perspective as a
>human, not a monster. It even strikes at the very real
>urge of age to hunger for youth and beauty. Everyone
>does this. Mary K. Letourneau can't restrain herself,
>many of the rest of us can. By accepting Lolita as a
>great novel, we are also forced to accept our own
>potential for evil. As Humbert finds out, the reality
>is not as fine as the fantasy. Any good novel employs
>humor, pathos, drama, and psychology in even measures
>to move the reader. Lolita is at the very least a good
>novel, but unlike Forest Gump, Breakfast of Champions,
>or Huckleberry Finn, humor is not it's main objective.
>That's my point.
>
>Patrick King
>--- bobav1 <<mailto:rav7%40COLUMBIA.EDU> rav7@COLUMBIA.EDU> wrote:
>
> >
> > Dear Patrick:
> >
> > OK, you win.
> >
> > Lolita = not funny
> >
> > Corpse-moving = funny funny
> >
> > If I understand your concluding sentences, Lolita is
> > not funny any
> > more than the lives of actual child molesters are
> > funny, but
> > corpse-moving is funny because the lives of actual
> > murdering
> > corpse-movers can be funny.
> >
> > And clearly, the discussion of humor in
> >
>www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-v-obit.html
> > is simply
> > deluded.
> >
> > Thank you for making my day :) (No, really …quot; your
> > email is wonderfully
> > Nabokovian!)
> >
> > Loving rara-avis,
> >
> > Bob V in NYC
> >
> > P.S. Amen to the superb stewardship of Denton!
> >
> > P.P.S. Do Lankford and Doherty wish to weigh in on
> > how Altman got the
> > Mexican dogs to hump on cue?
> >
> >
> > The reply to Richard Moore:
> >
> > Okay, but there's a lot more humor in Thompson's
> > Recoil, when Pat has
> > to get that corpse out of the elevator, or in
> > Highsmith's Ripley
> > Underground when Ripley is trying to get the corpse
> > out of his wine
> > cellar in the wheelbarrow and it keeps falling over,
> > than there is
> > anywhere in Lolita. Lolita is a psychological study
> > of one type of
> > child molester...and the child he molests, for in
> > Lolita, the child is
> > NOT innocent. Nabokov makes Humbert a tragic but not
> > detestable
> > figure. Clair Quilty is much easier to hate than
> > Humbert is. One can
> > even relate in some ways to Humbert's problem. In
> > the wide world there
> > is some crazy denial that children don't think about
> > sex until they're
> > 16 or so. Anyone's who's actually lived life knows
> > children experiment
> > with sex much much younger than that. That adults
> > have a
> > responsibility to control their behavior with
> > children is the given.
> > That some adults cannot and why, is the subject of
> > the novel. I'm sure
> > there were passages in Lolita that made me smile,
> > but I would not
> > categorize Lolita as a "very funny" novel. Any more
> > than the life of
> > Paul Shanley was a very funny life.
> >
> > Patrick King
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In
> <mailto:rara-avis-l%40yahoogroups.com> rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Patrick King
> > <abrasax93@...> wrote:
> > >
> > > Frankly, Bob, no, I don't find those passages
> > "funny"
> > > at all. I find them to be true and beautiful.
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
>__________________________________________________________
>Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate
>in the Yahoo! Answers Food & Drink Q&A.
>< http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545367> http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545367
>

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