Anthony Stadlen wrote:

Talking of which, can anyone explain the importance of this barber, and why he should have cost VN a month of work, as he claimed in 'On a Book Entitled "Lolita"'? There's an easel on the barber's desk with a picture of his dead son, just as there was one on the dentist Quilty's desk with a picture of his then live nephew the playwright. But ... ?

Although the Kasbeam barber occupies only one long sentence, I see that sentence as the reader’s experience of the novel in miniature: Humbert’s experience listening to the barber talk about his son without realising he is dead parallels the reader’s experience listening to Humbert talk about his 'daughter’ without realising she is dead.  Of course, this assumes that it would take an astute reader indeed to keep John Ray’s seemingly throwaway comment that “Mrs. ‘Richard F.Schiller’ died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn baby girl” (p.6) in mind until “Mrs. Richard F.Schiller” next appears at the bottom of her letter 250-odd pages later...

Nick.

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EDNOTE. I recall that philosopher Richard Rorty discusses the signifigcnce of LOLITA's Kasbeam barber. Rorty's approach is discussed in an essay by Leona Toker available on Zembla.

-- 
Stephen H. Blackwell
Associate Professor of Russian
Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures
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University of Tennessee
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sblackwe@utk.edu