the bookshop
"'You really need something like this,' Milo said, not at all urgently. Under his arm he had a thinnish book, covered with the leaf-green paper of the Olympia Press. 'This is volume one.'"'Is there a volume two?'
"'Yes, but I've lent it to someone, or left it somewhere.'
"'You should keep them together as a set,' said Florence firmly. She looked at the title, Lolita. 'I only stock good novels, you know. They don't move very fast. Is this good?'
"'It'll make your fortune, Florence.'
"'But is it good?'
"'Yes.'
"'Thank you for suggesting it. I feel the need for advice sometimes. You're very kind.'
"'You're always making that mistake,' Milo replied.
"The truth was that Florence Green had not been brought up to understand natures such as Milo's. Just as she still thought of gravity as a force that pulled things towards it, not simply as a matter of least resistance, so she felt sure that character was a struggle between good and bad intentions. It was too difficult to believe that he simply lapsed into whatever he did next only if it seemed to him less trouble than anything else.
"She took a note of the title Lolita, and the author's name, Nabokov. It sounded foreign -- Russian, perhaps, she thought."
"'I don't attach as much importance as you do, I dare say, to the notions of right and wrong. I have read Lolita, as you requested. It is a good book, and therefore you should try to sell it to the inhabitants of Hardborough. They won't understand it, but that is all to the good. Understanding makes the mind lazy.'"
"British Railways delivered the copies of Lolita from Flintmarket station, twenty-five miles away. When the carrier van arrived it drew, as usual, a ragged cheer from the bystanders. Something new was coming to Hardborough."
"...and I also think we should cease to offer for sale the complained-of and unduly sensational novel by V. Nabokov. We cannot cite Herring v. Metropolitan Board of Works 1863 in this instance as the crowd has not assembled as the result of famine or of a shortage of necessary commodities."
- More information on Penelope Fitzgerald. (Free registration to The New York Times required.)
Previous | Index | Next Nabokovilia | Home | Index | Books | Resources | Tributes | Contact | Shop