Post for 9/26/13

Another odd thing about this book is capitalization. Nabokov capitalizes the first letter of many words. However, try always seem to be grammatically correct, or big overarching ideas. For instance, on page 105 (I know this was in Tuesday's reading) he writes, "Instead of basking in the beams of smiling Chance, I was obsessed by all sorts of purely ethical doubts and fears." It's a rather funny thing to do. Not only funny in the sense that it is strange, or out of the norm, but also because it is properly funny. It's great to see Nabokov point and laugh at themes in his book. While there are most definitely a number of (fascinating) themes in Lolita, Nabokov doesn't like being flashy about them. In fact, in my opinion, Nabokov uses these capitalizations to almost underline this idea of "could you imagine if I was this bad of a writer?" So he beats you over the head with these words that are part of larger symbolic, intellectual frameworks, to laugh at how ridiculous of a practice he finds that to be. Nabokov, very obviously I might add, has his fun in games of hiding his motifs, and making them seem offhandedly and unimportant.