-------- Original Message --------
Has anyone ever noticed the structural similarities between the openings
of__Lolita__ and Henry James's
'The Turn of the Screw?' In each case, the main, first-person narrative
is preceded by an elaborate, multiple 'framing' of mediators, who
constitute a line of transmission of a story in manuscript. In each
case, again, it is one of these mediators who gives the tale its title.
I am not suggesting, or even very much interested in, whether VN was
'influenced by' HJ. The whole idea of literary 'influence' deserves the
scorn VN heaped on it. And, as I vaguely remember, VN did not rate
James very highly. But then VN's pantheon was small indeed, and one
suspects that he was hardest on those writers who were exploring the
same territory as he--T.S. Eliot. for glaring example. I think that the
similarity in narrative strategy between these two tales is a
reflection of the same imaginative topography..
If anyone finds this line of reflection worth pursuing, I would be
happy for the companionship.
Not immediately a propos, but Henry James, in one of the Prefaces to the
New York edition, calls 'the critical challenge' 'essentially the
spirit of fine attention.'
--What oft was thought but ne'er so well expres't!