VD – Welcome to the Vivian Darkbloom Show, I am you your host, Vivian Darkbloom. Today my guests are characters from Vladimir Nabokov’s novels Lolita and Pale Fire.
My first guest today is the elusive American dramatist Mr. Claire Quilty, educated at Columbia and known for plays such as “The Girl who Loved Lightning” and “Fatherly Love”.
CQ – Darkbloom, hmmm, sounds like a made up name…
VD – I can assure you Mr. Quilty, I am as real as you are.
CQ – I see I’ll have to remember that name. Might want to use it later on.
VD - Next is Miss Delores Haze, also known as Lolita and is accompanied by her stepfather Mr. Humbert Humbert, who is the novel’s narrator.
HH – says _______________________________________________________________
VD - And from Pale Fire, I am happy to introduce Zemblan commentator Mr. Charles Kinbote, also known as Charles the Beloved.
VD - Our final guest today is the daughter of famous poet John Shade. She is The Lady of the Lake, Miss Hazel Shade.
HS & CK – REDIPS!!!
VD – We will start out with a little icebreaker to get everyone talking. What are your hobbies?
HH – My hobbies are chess, writing, and road trips. And I enjoy sitting on a park bench, holding a book, while the soothing sounds of children splash my ears.
LO – I like playing tennis, acting, and going to the movies.
CQ – My hobbies are fast cars, photography, and pets.
VD-And what kinds of pets do you have?
CQ-I have many...(looks at Lolita)
CK –Well Vivian, In Zembla, I often entertained myself with my “boy pages, a whole mountain of gift boys from Troth, and Tuscany, and Albanoland” but my favorite playmate was certainly my dear Oleg, Duke or Rahl However now that I am living here in New Wye, I spend most of my time gazing in the windows of the Shade home.
HS – Reading, in my room, ALONE. Knitting. Swimming late at night, in the lake.
VD - Though some people may find this question too Freudian, I must ask, “How do you feel about being a character in a novel?”
CK – Well Mrs. Darkbloom let me say that I am not surprised in the least, firstly I am sure that I already exist in many history textbooks in my native Zembla and our poet and my dear friend John Shade wrote his poem Solus Rex about my fascinating life and me…
HS – No. The poem Pale Fire “might have been about you, me, or some quaint blend”. I am horrified that my father turned my suffering into entertainment.
CK – Absurd! Ahh yes I know about you, Jane Provost told me all about you. It is clearly about me and my fantastic escape from Zembla. “But then it is also true that Hazel Shade resembles me in certain respects” how very fortunate for you (looking at hazel)
VD – Moving on, Mr. Humbert?
HH – I wrote the novel about myself, so I planned to be in it. My story seems to have bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. I elude my own slippery self, and have tried in vain to find who I am. So I welcome any exploration into the deep abyss of my soul, and prostrate myself before the winged gentle man of the jury.
VD – Miss Haze?
LO – Whatever...I guess it's cool....it doesn't surprise me that this brute would write an entire book about me.
VD – And you? (Addressing CQ)
CQ – I don’t think I am really in that book.
VD – I would not have invited you to be on the show today if you were not in the novel.
CQ – You prove to me that I’m in the book and I’ll believe you.
LO has fit, interrupt at the end of CQ’s line.
DAD you promised me we were going to go see a movie...you know, the western...the one with the cowboys and indians...and now we're HERE at this stupid TV show?
HH- Need I remind you, darling, of the desolate place I will take where we will spend years in seclusion, if need be, studying Latin and French. Enfant charmate et foubre (sly and lovely child)
VD – OK, we must get back on topic now please. You all steal and become thieves in some way, why is that?
CK – Vivian let me cut you off there as you are clearly referring to my family, the Zemblan royal family, and our crown jewels and our throne stolen from us by the extremists.
HS – No, you fool. She means because you stole my dad’s poem.
LO – (looking back and forth between HH and CQ) they both stole my life.
HH – You stole my heart, delicious daughter, with your wily ways.
CQ – You came to me.
HH – What did you say?
CQ – I said, “I saw a bee.”
CK – Ahh, yes, yes bees! Yes I once knew a beautiful man boy beekeeper, he worked in the royal mows at our palace. A mow being the Zemblan word for a field next to a barn of course!
LO – OMG not this stuff again. Shut him up.
CQ – Where’d you get her?
HH – Hmmm?
CQ – I said, “The weather’s getting better.” Who’s the girl?
HH – My daughter.
CQ – No, she’s not.
HH – What?
CQ – I said, “July was really hot.”
LO-(interrupts) When will this be over? I just want to go now...
HH – Hush. I will get you an ice cream as soon as we are done.
LO – Pedophile.
HH – I can’t help it if I suffer from excessive desire.
CQ-What ever happened to strength and reverence?
VD – Human beings attend! If you all cannot get along, I will have to stop reading, close my book and you will cease to exist until the book is opened again. Vladimir Nabokov, who created you all, has a great love for the game of chess. If you were a chess piece, which piece would you be? (Confusion and questioning who VN is…yes or no on this, we have not been using it while practicing)
CK – mmm of course you are referring to Solus Rex, the chess problem in which the king is left alone on the board. This is why my friend John Shade wrote about me and why the poem was meant to be entitled Solus Rex, I am clearly the king piece! And soo… (cut CK off here)
HH – Solus Rex is an inferior move. I am of course the knight protecting my Frigid Queen.
LO – Well, I guess that makes me the queen. Gee, thanks for answering that one for me, DAD. And while we're on the topic, SHE would be a pawn because pawns are useless, common, and ugly.
HS – XANAX or another silly nonsense phrase (crying)
CQ – (jumps in) Chess, hmmm, nope don’t play chess. Too much deception. Too much strategy. Kind of beneath a man of my ilk. Besides I’m a terrible liar.
VD – Back to our rational discussion if you please. Since there has been so much disagreement, I am going to try something different now. I am going to ask you each to talk about another guest. What mythic character would another guest be?
CK – Vivian I am going to have to cut you off again because I think we can all agree that no one here is really qualified to make any commentary on a man like myself! So let me just say that I would certainly be considered Zeus, as he is king of the gods and I am a king myself, what could be more fitting! Although I did once overhear someone, I think it was Sybil Shade, say that I was more akin to Narcissus which make very little sense indeed! ( take out mirror and admires self)
HH – my Lolita is, of course, the Goddess Venus, and Hazel over there is Mania, the very personification of insanity, Goddess of the dead and nights spirits.
HS – She (looking at LO) must be Persephone because she gets raped.
LO – At least I get some.
CQ silences the girls before it goes further.
CQ – You, Mr. Humbert are Acteaon from my play, The Enchanted Hunters
LO – On that topic, Vivian, Mr. Quilty here would be Pan, who is said to be the companion and seducer of nymphs, as well as the god of theatrical criticism...seeing as you write plays and all....
HH – Lolita, darling, don’t talk to strangers.
CQ – I’d hardly consider myself a stranger.
HH starts to pull a gun, realizing who CQ is, everyone begins talking loudly over one another and VD closes the book. Everyone stops.
VD – Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.
Good night and thank you for watching the Vivian Darkbloom Show. Tune in tomorrow when my guest will be Mr. Hugh Person.
Helena will be posting the Group Presentation Blog for our group.
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