DJ Wrote: Uh, isn't one of the uses of comedy to undermine
sensibilities?
******** Uh, sure, but Lolita is not consistently a funny
book. There's some light humor there to take the edge off a
pretty creepy tale of a man who marries a woman to get close
to her 14-year-old daughter, then drives his wife
passive/aggressively to suicide so he can do what he wants
with the child. Caldwell, Twain, Wodehouse are funny and
thought provoking. The humor is Lolita has to be mined like
diamonds. It cretainly is thought-provoking, however... and
noir!
Patrick King
---
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net wrote:
> Patrick wrote:
>
> "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' sensibilities.'"
>
> Uh, isn't one of the uses of comedy to
undermine
> sensibilities? In
> fact, that's one of the reasons humor is
so
> culturally specific, because
> it depends upon at least tweaking, if not
breaking,
> a culture's
> ideology. And boy did I not get the sense
from
> Richard and the others
> that thought Lolita was funny that they thought
the
> funniness in any way
> undercut its greatness, quite the
opposite
>
> Bringing it closer to home, much of Willeford
is
> laugh out loud funny.
> And then you start thinking about some of the
things
> you're laughing at
> -- humor that makes you think, and
sometimes
> confront the values of your
> culture and yourself.
>
> Mark
>
>
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