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One thing that Nabokov does--
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and I think this is related to the way words like "throb" and the layers of fiction and reality,
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how these things permeate into different texts and different layers of the story--
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he always mixes originality with cliche.
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He mixes the bad with the good.
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He has a real disdain for the black and the white,
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that sense of simplicity.
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And so, you're going to find-- even at moments where I think we're
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meant to understand Humbert's prose as overwrought,
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that muscle-bound man that Amis talks about--
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you're also going to find in those passages,
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while you're being just brought to the sense of parody,