Free Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov Page A

doctor advised Tamworth to lock up my cellar, which he did and concealed the key which the locksmith will not be able to duplicate before Monday and I’m too proud, you know, to buy the cheap wines they have in the village, so all I can offer you—you shake your head in advance and you’re jolly right, son—is a can of apricot juice. Now allow me to talk to you about titles and libels. You know, that letter you wrote me tickled me black in the face. I have been accused of trifling with minors, but my minor characters are untouchable, if you permit me a pun.”
    He went on to explain that if your true artist had chosen to form a character on the basis of a living individual, any rewriting aimed at disguising that character was tantamount to destroying the living prototype as would driving, you know, a pin through a little doll of clay, and the girl nextdoor falls dead. If the composition was artistic, if it held not only water but wine, then it was invulnerable in one sense and horribly fragile in another. Fragile, because when a timid editor made the artist change “slender” to “plump,” or “brown” to “blond” he disfigured both the image and the niche where it stood and the entire chapel around it; and invulnerable, because no matter how drastically you changed the image, its prototype would remain recognizable by the shape of the hole left in the texture of the tale. But apart from all that, the customers whom he was accused of portraying were much too cool to announce their presence and their resentment. In fact they would rather enjoy listening to the tattle in literary salons with a little knowing air, as the French say.
    The question of the title—
Tralatitions
—was another kettle of fish. Readers did not realize that two types of title existed. One type was the title found by the dumb author or the clever publisher after the book had been written.
That
was simply a label stuck on and tapped with the side of the fist. Most of our worst best-sellers had that kind of title. But there was the other kind: the title that shone through the book like a watermark, the title that was born with the book, the title to which the author had grown so accustomed during the years of accumulating the written pages that it had become part of each and of all. No, Mr. R. could not give up
Tralatitions
.
    Hugh made bold to remark that the tongue tended to substitute an “I” for the second of the three “t’s.”
    “The tongue of ignorance,” shouted Mr. R.
    His pretty little secretary tripped in and announced that he should not get excited or tired. The great man rose with an effort and stood quivering and grinning, and proffering a large hairy hand.
    “Well,” said Hugh, “I shall certainly tell Phil howstrongly you feel about the points he has raised. Good-bye, sir, you will be getting a sample of the jacket design next week.”
    “So long and soon see,” said Mr. R.

19
    We are back in New York and this is their last evening together.
    After serving them an excellent supper (a little on the rich side, perhaps, but not overabundant—neither was a big eater) obese Pauline, the
femme de ménage
, whom they shared with a Belgian artist in the penthouse immediately above them, washed the dishes and left at her usual hour (nine fifteen or thereabouts). Since she had the annoying propensity of sitting down for a moment to enjoy a bit of TV, Armande always waited for her to have gone before running it for her own pleasure. She now turned it on, let it live for a moment, changed channels—and killed the picture with a snort of disgust (her likes and dislikes in these matters lacked all logic, she might watch one or two programs with passionate regularity or on the contrary not touch the set for a week as if punishing that marvelous invention for a misdemeanor known only to her, and Hugh preferred to ignore her obscure feuds with actors and commentators). She opened a book, but here Phil’s wife rang up to invite