S K-B: Am I
alone in finding this review [TOME RAIDER: All About Lulu]
unsatisfactory? Any modern novelist writing about "under-age" sex can hardly
avoid _some_ (possibly a lot of) influence from VN's Lolita; ditto with "incest"
and Ada. Evison is slated as "derivative" at one stage [...] Insofar as
Evison's _style_ is inspired by VN's, that's to be praised. Updike and others
have been similarly motivated; they may never match the master, but name a
better role-model. Let's not use "derivative" as a curse, belittling a young
writer early in his career.
JM: I share Stan's
views. I just finished reading Ruth Rendell's 1998 crime novel, "A
Sight for Sore Eyes", in which she writes about a Red Admiral and
this "catastrophe butterfly" appears twice in connection with
a violent death. Even after comparing this ominous fluttering, in
Rendell, with VN's choice of a Vanessa in "Pale Fire", I found there
was nothing else in common bt her novel and VN's books.
Butterflies and
popular beliefs related to them, sibling incest, oedipal issues, unreliable
narrators and quirky characters ( no lack of these in Rendell, and she
is often clinically precise and compassionate!) are not VN's exclusive
domain, nor are these his trade-mark - although sometimes reductive critics
seem to consider it so. "Derivative" should not be a
curse.