Strong opinions

TO THE EDITOR OF PLAYBOY

published July, 1961

The amusing memoir by Maurice Girodias {Pornologist on Olympus, Playboy, April) contains a number of inaccuracies. My correspondence with Mr. Girodias, and with my literary agent about Mr. Girodias, will soon be published in an appendix to a full account of Lolita's tribulations, and will demonstrate what caused the «deterioration» ot our relations and reveal which of us was «so absorbed by the financial aspect of the nymphet phenomenon» as to be «blinded to other realities». Here I shall limit myself to the discussion of only one of Mr. Girodias' delusions. I wish to refute Mr. Girodias' bizarre charge that I was aware of his presence at the Gallimard cocktail party in October, 1959. Since I had never met the man, and was not familiar with his face, I could hardly have «identified» him as he «slowly progressed toward» me. I am extremely distrait (as Humbert Humbert would have put it in his affected manner) and am liahle not to make out mumbled presentations, especially in the hubbub and crush of that kind of affair. One can know obscure mythological or historical figures by their atrnbutes and emblems, and had Mr. Girodias appeared in a punning charade, carrying a plate with an author's head, I might have recognized him. But he came plateless, and, while apologizing for my abstraction, I must affirm here that I did not talk to Mr. Girodias about his brother's translation, or anything else, and that I remained completely and blissfuly ignorant of having exchanged a polite grin with the Olympian Pornologist. Incidentally, in the course of describing our fictitious colloquy, Mr. Girodias compares my physical motions to those of a dolphin. This, I admit, is nicely observed. I do, alas, resemble a dolphin — and can do nothing about it, except remark, in conclusion, lhai Mr. Girodias speaks of those gentle cetaceans with the frightening appetite of an elasmobranch fish.

Nice. France