sorry, dude, but he used both terms. and my feelings are really hurt that you didn't pick up the Pynchonism here!!!
Maybe so, but the one I remember and the one that stuck was witch doctor. Especially as I think that is what he used exclusively in Speak, Memory, if I recall correctly.
Pynchon has always been impenetrable to me. I looked up inverarity, though, and see it is part of Lot 49, a book I never read. I tried to finish the buzz bomb book and couldn't do it.
I'm impressed that you read Pynchon. A lot of folks say they do, just as they say they've read Finnegan's Wake, but I think maybe 2 in 10 of those who've actually read it actually are conversant. I'm still wading through Ada, and feel like a 10th grader when I pick it up.
Nabby's genius was that he could do impenetrable Ada--thank God for the footnotes--as well as more or less accessible Lolita while telling his students to forget about any high falutin' interpretations of Metamorphosis and just draw the damn bug.
I'm sure there's a lot of merit in Pynchon, but he's just not for me.
For a terrific and terrifying book, especially for parents, you might want to read Cormac McCarthy's latest, The Road. My estimation of CM is climbing rapidly.
I don't think Nabokov was molested by his uncle. I think that is definitely a very quirky interpretation, and not one supported by the historical record. First time I've heard that notion, and I've been reading a lot about Nabokov, including all the bios, for a very long time. His childhood is uniformly described in the same way he does: idyllic.
I think he objected to Freud's lack of concreteness, the made-up quality of Freud's insights. The gas of it all, much of which is now finally being understood as such. |
