Word: humbert
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...them." Every summer they coursed up and down Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and Oregon in search for the feeding grounds of Nabokov's beloved "blues." Between butterflies, Vladimir sat beside Vera jotting on 3 by 5 cards. His notes were about a man named Humbert Humbert. General Motors, so far as anyone knows, has paid scant heed to the historic fact that much of Lolita was written in a '52 Buick...
...Humbert's sad obsession with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze went off in the U.S. of the late '50s like a shot in church. At first, U.S. publishers were afraid to touch it. Vera was afraid Nabokov might lose his job at Cornell if they did. When it finally came out, reviewers, not yet used to such material in "serious literature," flew into rages of indignation and feigned boredom. New York Times Critic Orville Prescott, in particular, earned a gargoyle's niche in literary history by exclaiming, "Dull, dull, dull." But Lolita in due course was recognized as the masterpiece...
...THIS BOOK is about love, not sex," said the blurbs for Lolita. A number of disappointed readers found this to be true: Lolita's Humbert Humbert is a sad aging man who needs love, but wants it only from little girls. Nowadays the blurbs have changed, and The Killing of Sister George is enthusaistically described as "the most explicit and sensational of flock of films on lesbianism." Perhaps. Sister George is about love too--aside from the one scene that has given it its notoriety and its major flaw...
...each year, and many will seek partners younger than their former wives. Until now, an implicit criticism has always been that such marriages somehow violate the natural order; the common reaction has been that the marriages are disreputably "Freudian," or that the husband is some sort of Lolita-chasing Humbert. As such marriages increase in visibility, however, it will probably become clear that neither reaction is necessarily just. There are obvious perils. Yet these should perhaps be balanced against the need for emotional renewals, a sense of possibility and experiment rather than mere resignation to the inevitable. A maxim...
...Ellen Endicott-Jones) upsets all the artificial relationships. Anouilh never has time to exploit The Rehearsal's central conceit for he soon finds himself struggling to protect his ingenue from the cynics that surround her. Hero, the Count's alcoholic friend, takes over and the play sloshes forward lugubriously. Humbert Allen Astredo delineates his drunkenness with sensitivity, but there's just so much Anouilh packed into his long monologues, that he can't help but become tiresome...