Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

i’m reading lolita. currently just finished the first part. why didn’t anyone ever make me read nabokov before? i like the quote by john updike on the back cover. “nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.” it’s true. almost as good is the double take i get from everyone on the subway who sees the close-up of a girl’s lips on the front of the 50th anniversary edition. effective cover design.

…
the more truly great books i read, the more i realize that i will never be a writer by trade, especially a novelist. i gasp at the greatness of some novels. not in the way that i gasp at dancers, or painters, or musicians. those art forms are so alien to me. i could never master the time steps in tap class–though who knows what i could have accomplished if i had started at earlier than 16. i can’t draw a proportionate stick figure, and i was always one of those children whose block letters got more and more scrunched as he reached the right margin. i don’t understand how someone can sit at a piano and, without sheet music, play something they have merely heard.

writing is different. i feel that i understand the beauty of rhetoric, of syntax. i know how to throw together a sentence that is at least somewhat pleasing to the vast majority of my audience. it’s not foreign; it’s within my grasp. i don’t think i have the will to make it a living, though. i think that the forced work of constructing and re-constructing would be more displeasing to me than a total loss of writing ability.

months ago, a palm reader told me that i have vast artistic abilities, but i will never use them. i think he may be right.

he also told me i won’t be fabulously wealthy.
is it sad that i’m more willing to battle that notion?

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ps - so, britney. i watched this, and i feel bad for her. she’s a fucking mess, yes, but do you see how they’re practically climbing on the car in the video? what’s the point of such a big zoom lens? it’s intentional obnoxiousness.