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Fw: Fw: my first time
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my first timeEDNOTE. Abdellah Bouazza of The Nethrlands has been a NABOKV-Lsubscriber and contributor since 1994.
----- Original Message -----
From: A. Bouazza
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 2:37 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: my first time
The year 1984, I was 18: I read The Eye, because we used to receive unsolicited brochures from a book club advertising besides Harold Robbins and his ilk VN's LOLITA. So I remembered the writer's name and looked him up in the local library; but I wanted first to read something "small"; that's why I decided upon The Eye. I was struck and somewhat puzzled by the foreword -this was a writer claiming to have no social interests or messages...! Later on in the same year as the summer vacation was nearing I borrowed Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and LOLITA (how ironic fate can be!)from the same library. Since Dostoevsky was the more serious stuff I started reading it. Suffice to say that I have never read anything by this writer since that first terrible reading experience.
After Karamazov I read another writer (Alice Hoffman) before setting my teeth into LOLITA. I read it in three enthralled exhilarating days, interrupted by brief intermissions to play badminton with my little sister.
I am still rereading VN.
A. Bouazza.
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 2:42 AM
Subject: Fw: my first time
----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 11:57 AM
Subject: my first time
Imagine -- the very middle of the '60s and I'm stuck in high school. But once a week a radio program ('the Radio Free University of the Air' I think it was called) used to keep me from insanity. One evening I was introduced to Pnin -- love at first hearing. The next morning I had to explain to my family what was so funny that I was laughing out loud at one o'clock in the morning. I think it was Pnin driving a car, or perhaps Pnin enjoying his laundry.
I quickly progressed to Lolita and was lost to any other American contemporary writer.
Carolyn
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EDNOTE. I can't recall for sure but I think my first time was LOlita in the late fifties. I recall buying my father a birthday _Pnin_ since Pnin reminded me of my first Russian teacher--a volume I later inherited. My father always wrote the date at the end of any book he read, so that was December 1957. The third was _Invitation to a Beaheading_ which, after LOLITA, I found disappointing although, many years later, I found it to be technically far more glittering than LO.
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----- Original Message -----
From: A. Bouazza
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 2:37 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: my first time
The year 1984, I was 18: I read The Eye, because we used to receive unsolicited brochures from a book club advertising besides Harold Robbins and his ilk VN's LOLITA. So I remembered the writer's name and looked him up in the local library; but I wanted first to read something "small"; that's why I decided upon The Eye. I was struck and somewhat puzzled by the foreword -this was a writer claiming to have no social interests or messages...! Later on in the same year as the summer vacation was nearing I borrowed Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and LOLITA (how ironic fate can be!)from the same library. Since Dostoevsky was the more serious stuff I started reading it. Suffice to say that I have never read anything by this writer since that first terrible reading experience.
After Karamazov I read another writer (Alice Hoffman) before setting my teeth into LOLITA. I read it in three enthralled exhilarating days, interrupted by brief intermissions to play badminton with my little sister.
I am still rereading VN.
A. Bouazza.
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 2:42 AM
Subject: Fw: my first time
----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 11:57 AM
Subject: my first time
Imagine -- the very middle of the '60s and I'm stuck in high school. But once a week a radio program ('the Radio Free University of the Air' I think it was called) used to keep me from insanity. One evening I was introduced to Pnin -- love at first hearing. The next morning I had to explain to my family what was so funny that I was laughing out loud at one o'clock in the morning. I think it was Pnin driving a car, or perhaps Pnin enjoying his laundry.
I quickly progressed to Lolita and was lost to any other American contemporary writer.
Carolyn
-----------------------------------------------
EDNOTE. I can't recall for sure but I think my first time was LOlita in the late fifties. I recall buying my father a birthday _Pnin_ since Pnin reminded me of my first Russian teacher--a volume I later inherited. My father always wrote the date at the end of any book he read, so that was December 1957. The third was _Invitation to a Beaheading_ which, after LOLITA, I found disappointing although, many years later, I found it to be technically far more glittering than LO.
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