Francis Levy in The Interpretation of Vladimir Nabokov's Dreams

Posted: 11/21/2014 12:52 pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-levy/the-interpretation-of-vla_b_6184484.html

“Gennady Barabtarlo's TLS piece ("Textures of Time, " 10/31/14 ) recounts an experiment that Vladimir Nabokov conducted between October of 1964 until January 3, 1965 in which he wrote down his dreams. Barabtalo explains,

"The point of the experiment was to test the theory that dreams can be precognitive as well as retrospective."

According to Barabtarlo, Nabokov was testing the theories outlined by J.W. Dunne in his An Experiment with Time (Studies in Consciousness) (1927). Barabtalo's TLSpiece also provides some sample dreams which are unavoidable fodder for the kinds of simplistic interpretation Nabokov would have enthusiastically discountenanced. Only a comically deluded character in a Nabokov novel would be grandiose enough to take on the psyche of the master. But here's a go. On November 22, l964 Nabokov dreams he's in a "lecture-hall." His father is speaking...”

Revealed: 'Lolita' isn't just a classic novel; Nabokov's story of sick lust really happened, by Douglas Perry

http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2014/11/lolita_isnt_just_a_classic_nov.html

“Everyone knows the story of "Lolita" -- and no one knows it.

Vladimir Nabokov's novel is a totem in modern literature, an unflinching look at a monster who has been able to hide behind his education and manners. But it's also more than a classic of 20th century literature. Writer and editor Sarah Weinman has published a long, powerful piece of historical reportage about the largely unknown real story that inspired Nabokov's tale.

11-year-old Sally Horner entered a Camden, N.J., Woolworth's more than 60 years with the intention of stealing a 5-cent notepad. She was 11 years old and the thievery was her initiation into a girl's club. Instead, it would prove another, far more sinister initiation. "On the afternoon of June 13, 1948, she had no idea a simple act of shoplifting would destroy her life," Weinman writes in Hazlitt, an online magazine owned by Penguin Random House.

A middle-aged man wearing a suit and a fedora stopped Sally as she left the store. "I am an FBI agent," he told her. "And you are under arrest."

The man, Frank La Salle, was not a G-man. He was an ex-con and sometime mechanic…”