Word: lepidopterists
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Smited Thigh. An accomplished stylist, Sir Ivone pins his character to the boards like a lepidopterist. There is a first glimpse of Hitler: "Conversation stopped, everyone shrank towards the walls, a door opened and Hitler strode in, looking neither to the right nor the left." In conference the Führer displays manic mannerisms. He pushes back his chair, smites his thigh with frustrated rage, thunders ultimatums, broods in angry silence over folded arms. He inspired "such physical repugnance" that Sir Ivone hated to shake "his podgy hand," and at one point, though knowing it to be "pusillanimous," asked...
...comparison crackles sporadically like sniper fire. But since Nabokov is an accomplished literary marksman, these short stories are on target, and several are bull's-eyes. The targets are strikingly varied: a pair of Siamese twins, each of whom must be his brother's keeper; a frustrated lepidopterist; a White Russian general playing triple agent in the Paris of the '205. The unifying theme, if there is one, is that of the heart's exile from the far country of its desires, a logical reflection of the physical exile of longtime Russian Emigre Nabokov. The uprooted...
...keeps rattling through the story, the reason is that Author Nabokov himself is an irrepressibly witty man who can see tragedy through laughter as clearly as he can see life's darkest side from its calmest vantage point. Nabokov teaches European literature at Cornell, is also a dedicated lepidopterist who has discovered about a dozen new species and subspecies. He disclaims all but a writer's interest in nymphets. To get sub-teen patter right, he took rides in a school bus. He obviously also learned much about roadside America. Says he: "I love motels. I would like...
After that, no office could hold him. For the rest of his life, with the pure, cold, scientific passion of a lepidopterist, he was true to butterflies. He even found a girl who was willing to spend her evenings in his "Bug Room," setting specimens and cataloguing his collection. His subsequent marriage became an insect-ridden partnership. Between them, Newman and his wife built their hobby of butterfly-farming into a paying business...
...Paris, one Albert Jauron announced that he had perfected an anti- aircraft projectile which, upon exploding in midair, would fling out a net to enmesh or envelop an airplane as a lepidopterist snares a butterfly. The Japanese Government having recently announced the adoption of just such a shell, Inventor Jauron declared he would...