Oh, and I forgot one of the best, VN-ish parts of "The Moth": The very reliable narrator of the story actually footnotes three of the written volleys between the warring entomologists!
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2010 21:25:41 +0100
From: hafidbouazza@GMAIL.COM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Martin Amis
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Dear List,
While you are discussing Wells' influence on Nabokov (pity no one seems to have read his short story 'The Moth', which I have pointed out a while ago: it is more important than any green door), I want to show Nabokov's influence on others. On Martin Amis, especially. In his hilarious and delightful short story 'Let Me Count the Times' ( Amis at his best; from Heavy Water, Johathan Cape, 1998) the reader will find this sentence:
Her hands mimed their defencelessness as the great muscles rippled and plunged along Vernon's powerful back.
A strong echo of Nabokov's in Despair:
From my magical point of vantage I watched the ripples running and plunging along my muscular back...
There is also this sentence in Amis' same story:
Vernon always felt desperately ashamed afterwards, and would be a limp spectre of embarrassment and remorse at breakfast the following day.
That 'limp spectre of embarrassment...etc.' reminds me strongly of Nabokov,; I am sure he used 'limp spectre of' at least once, but I cannot pinpoint any passage. At first glance I was reminded of this (also from Despair):
...and my will lay limp in an empty world... - which is not what I am looking for.
Amis' whole erotic story seems to draw heavily from the sexual part in Despair when the narrator dwells on his 'dissociation' during love-making (chapter two).
Best,
Hafid Bouazza
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