Police Sting Lolita

In the Police song "Don't Stand So Close to Me", lead singer Sting alludes to 'THAT book by Nabokov'. Vladimar Nabokov has several famous book but THAT book can only refer to Lolita his infamous, controversial 1958 best seller that has emerged as a classice example of literature from the mid-twentieth century. Lolita is hilarious, disturbing, challenging, rigorous highlighting the most insane of narrators the obsessed, brilliant, paranoid, romantic Humbert. The book itself is an allusion to a real life kidnapping that Nabokov was very aware of and inspired by...the sad case of Sally Horner.

The Police alluded to  Lolita thus alludes to the story of Sally Horner which makes Lolita a cross referenced alluded book chock full of allusions and cross references.

Kubrick made a movie of Lolita starring the perfectly cast James Mason as Humbert, perfectly cast Shelley Winters as Charlotte, perfectly cast Peter Sellers as Clair Quilty and imperfectly cast (thank God) Sue Lyons as Lolita. The movie begins with a full screen, worshipful pedicure which has become  an inspiration for hand and foot models everywhere.

Lolita is one of those movies that when it comes on becomes almost impossible to turn off. We've watched it at least five times and if it came on today we'd watch it again. Same with Dr. Strangelove and 2001 and Spartacus.

Lolita got me hooked on Kubrick and made me a huge fan of Shelley Winters who perfected the sad,naive, innocent victimized archetype in other amazing performances such as Night of the Hunter, A Place in the Sun and even Poseidon Adventure

But all of this is not the point of this essay although it concurs with today's inspiration. The point of today's "essay" is how much I am beginning to enjoy sub standard editions of novels as they are presented by Kindle unlimited. This enjoyment is based on my own experience with writing an e book. Our e book (free on Kindle unlimited) Full Filler was quite an  awakening for me. My daughter Mary and I undertook the project with hardly any idea of what we were doing but what the hell. I had plenty of writing that I thought might entertain a wider audience. Mary is a designer. We put our efforts together and came up with a product which we submitted more or less for the hell of it. To our great surprise, the project was approved for printing, published and before we knew it, Full Filler was alive, available and loaded with the kind of blemishes that teams of prooofreaders and editors eliminate from books of a more finished variety.

I had never seen a book with so many zits. Maybe I was like a teenager looking into a mirror and exploding with self-consciousness at the reality of my complexion. My first cruise through our book left me kinda embarrassed.

I started looking at other self-published books. I soon realized that our effort was pretty representative of the genre. Garage rock as compared to studio rock. 

Let's play Louie, Louie and enjoy the fact that people are dancing.

When we went to paperback format we cleaned up most of the blemishes and were unashamed of those that eluded us. We're not perfectionists. We're humans enjoying a new kind of freedom. 

So how do we get back to Lolita.

Last weeek I decided to pick up a kindle version of Lolita on the cheap and was delighted to find the edition full of typos, spacing errors and ommissions.

Here's one of my favorites.

When widower Humbert weds widow Charlotte as an excuse to get closer to his obsession, the text reads...."When the bride is a WINDOW and the groom is a widower......

I assume Nabokov intended to use the word 'widow' rather than window although window suggests another level of interpretation that made me pause in my reading.

Beautiful.

Reading pauses are good. (Pause here if you like)

This stumble reminds me of the fact that Nabokov, he of the incredible vocabulary and immense  virtuosity had once looked at a text full of errors like all of us writersdo at some point before our supporting army cleans up the act.

Perfect in imperfection.

I have grown to love our e book. 

We created it without an army.

Proud of its authenticity.

Hey, check it out...it's free on Kindle.

And if you haven't read Lolita yet, well go ahead and try that one too.

I wonder if Sting read it. I'm sure he hasn't read Full Filler

I wonder how many people who have listened to Don't Stand So Close To Me have read Lolita or seen the Kubrick film. I imagine the percentage is small.

Allusion tend to work that way.