so specifically British (more specifically Cockney?) a series of usages that it would be surprising to find Nabokov using bloomer with that meaning - - not bloody likely, anyway.

Dear Carolyn,

 

My use of bloomer = howler was instinctive, as was my assertion about blooper; I admit to not having looked either word up in Partridge or any other dictionary, slang or otherwise.

 

However, this thread gives me a lead into saying something (blasphemous, I'm sure, but, as GBS is said to have said, all truths start as blasphemies) which I have been itching to unload for ages.

 

To me, in spite of my ignorance of Russian, and complete inability to say anything sensible about VN as a Russian author, he seems neither American nor Russian, but a cosmopolitan polyglot genius writing in English English. I cannot detect anything American about his writing, and hardly any influence of American authors (Poe? Frost?). The prime stimulants for his work appear to me to be Carroll's Alices. The ur-Lolita is Wonderland, and the ur-Pale Fire is Looking-Glass. These seem to me quintessentially English or British if you like.

 

VN's "American" works are not the works of an American writer, but those of a European, looking at America with wry amusement; and he quickly returned to Europe, when he found the means to do so.

 

I am sure VN was well aware of Cockney idioms, although I doubt he ever used any.

 

Time to sit back, expecting outrage.

 

Charles