A Boring Forward.

Unfortunately, I do not have a great engaging Nabokovian forward. However, it is important regarding my paper and the topic that it discusses. Sadly the papers could only be two pages long, and I'm sure many of us had the same problem of not having enough white space to explore as much as is necessary for most topics involving Nabokov and/or his work.


The mid-term paper that I handed in to Dr. Sexson earlier today (titled: The Barber's Son) takes a look at the impact of the Kasbeam barber scene on Humbert. The paper argues that just as Humbert allows the barber's son to exist in his imagination, the reader also must allow Humbert and Lolita to take refuge in the imagination for them to actually gain immortality.

While beginning to research this topic I found that I had opened a trap door, that lead to other trap doors and each other door lead to even more. It is the area of time, timelessness, mortality, and immortality according to Nabokov. I found many interesting arguments regarding Nabokov and his concept of these very abstract ideas. After spending a couple hours researching and thinking about this topic, I realized how vast it eventually be, how broad my research will take me. I decided to reserve this for my term paper and focus in on one scene in Lolita that might be a good stepping stone for further thought development.

I find it immensely exciting that the concept of imagination and memory are as tightly related to mortality and immortality as the concept of time, maybe even more so. Therefore, the argument of my paper is admittedly based on a pair of precarious stilts that wade through the thick soup of thought that surrounds Nabokov's work.