PS [ to Stan Kelly-Bootle's "sex beats coitus any
restless night."]
JM: Stan's sentence sounded familiar but the thread, once
found, was feeble, as it also deviatea from Stan's original
conclusion to dwell on the husks of words*.
What Shade mentions is "Sox," not "sex"!
** ( "Red Sox Beat Yanks 5-4/ On Chapman’s
Homer.") Kinbote, on the other hand, revels in a
dfferent kind of competition: "Nothing beats a fig
leaf," from an advert for underwear, copied
from the "family magazine Life, so justly famed
for its pudibundity in regard to the mysteries of the male
sex":***
............................................................................................................................................
*
Not even husks are safe: "Speaking as a botanist and a mad
woman, she said, the most extraordinary word in the English language was
'husked,' becaused it stood for opposite things, covered and uncovered, tightly
husked but easily husked, meaning they peel off quite easily, you don't have to
tear the waistband, you brute. 'Carefully husked brute,' said Van
tenderly..."
** Does Shade advance beyond the very respectful:
"We have been married forty years. At least
Four thousand times your pillow has been
creased
By our two heads. Four hundred thousand
times
The tall clock with the hoarse Westminster
chimes
Has marked our common hour...."
???? ( I rather appreciate his unimaginative
discretion)
***To extend the sinuous coverings there's a reference to
Nijinski in "Lolita": "all thighs and fig
leaves" while, in "Ada," Diaghilev becomes "Dangleleaf." from the archives (Nab-L Feb
2007,#177).