Don’t Shy Away

“What [Vladimir] Nabokov is actually doing in Lolita is deliberately drawing on all manner of anti-Semitic propaganda, from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Nazi caricatures of the Jewish ‘type,’ to create in Humbert Humbert the anti-Semitic cliché of legend, rather as, say, Chaucer draws on medieval misogynist writings to create in the figure of the Wife of Bath the archetypal shrew of his male audience’s nightmares.”

Cheers to @Selorian for becoming the 1,000th follower of @The_Millions on Twitter.

What happens if your town’s reputation was made by an author who hated it? Sinclair Lewis grew up in Sauk Centre, Minnesota and scathingly satirized it in Main Street (our Modern Library Revue of it), but it’s the town’s only claim to fame nearly a century later. At The Morning News, Matt Ray Robison visits.

As predicted, Haruki Murakami is hard at work on volume three of 1Q84. The Japan Times reports that the finale (?) of Murakami’s latest novel is slated to come out in Japanese next summer. Still no word on when we’ll see it in English.

Famous authors and their dogs, photographed by Jill Krementz.  Via The Daily Dish.