Nabokov in Lolita:
We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbour, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen. That is the conclusion of a long paragraph devoted to our expectations that friends would not change, would adjust for life to the image of them we cherish. If this it true (it is!), then we can be sorry for that hypothetical book of poetry, and for us, who will not read it nor, in case we did, will appreciate it.
And we can also be sure that the same applies to us. So we'd better not show any such deeds of ours to anybody who knows us in the role of hot-dog stand operators. Better give them a hot-dog (and not a very remarkable one), if that is what they expect.
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Sorry, but spam keeps on trying to stick to my latest entries, so I have had to cut off the possibility of anonymous comments. I hope unregistered readers will understand.
American Dreamz - thoroughly incorrect, but true as life: the president, poor thing, discovers one day that the world is not what the dossiers made up by his collaborators say or what TV reflects... Just a question of perusing newspapers, especially foreign... TV contests are a hoax. And even suicide terrorists have their feelings and may enjoy Broadway musical shows and dream of becoming a Sinatra or a Dean Martin. Middle-class families are unsurmountably flashy, even if they are of Arab origin... And a Guantanamo-fated trio of dormant terrorists may be as funny and cheeky as their equivalent in anti-communist Ninotschka. Yeah, I enjoyed it (it was a hot summer afternoon and Madrid Colombian-peopled main avenues were so hostile). I laughed heartily. So did my daughter, who probably missed the political implications, but suspected something important was at stake. And it was. The idea that even our deepest terrors can be a matter of derision. Thanks God.
