From: Floyd Scarabelli
Category: Amis
Date: 8/23/99
Time: 11:45:46 AM
Remote Name: 129.219.126.3
FROM AMIS'S *LOLITA RECONSIDERED*: "I wonder how many readers survive the novel without realizing that its heroine is, so to speak, dead on arrival, like her child. Their brief obituaries are tucked away in the 'editor's' Foreword, in nonchalant, school-newsletter form: 'Mona Dahl' is a student in Paris. 'Rita' has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. 'Richard F. Schiller' died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. 'Vivian Darkbloom' has written a biography..."
FROM THE FIRST CHAPTER OF *LONDON FIELDS*: "On top of all this I get to use his car, his A-to-B device, which obediently awaits me on the ledge. In his note Mark Asprey apologizes on its behalf, letting me know that he has a better one, a much better one, moored to his country cottage, or country house, or country estate. Yesterday I staggered out and took a look at it...I climbed in and took a spin. I say *spin* to help account for the ten-minute dizzy spell that hit me when I came back into the apartment. I was impressed by its force. Giddiness and a new nausea, a moral nausea, coming from the gut, where all morality comes from (like waking up after a disgraceful dream and looking with dread for the blood on your hands). On the front passenger seat, under the elegant rag of a white silk scarf, lies a heavy car-tool."