I brought this up in class -- and I felt it needed expansion. I find that having read part of Lolita prior to delving into Tropic of Cancer my memory begins to fail me and I become confused as to which book was referring to what.
For example, there was a point where Miller mentions his wife, noting that she was not with him in the present. This comment made immediately brought me back to a passage where Nabakov's character's wife leaves him. His mentioning his wife in the past tense crossed those passages in my mind.
The sexual nature with which these books are both written is something with which the boundaries of both books is blurred. This is not to say that both books are inherently the same, they are by no mean interchangeable, however this similarity is important to note. The sexual nature with which both of these books were written arouses the same feelings. Feelings of moral boundaries being crossed and the peaked interest of a form of sexual connection that is not the same as your own. Both books do these things wonderfully.
Both of these novels were written in the first person, which gives them both the feeling of a diary, or confessional of desires and acts to the reader. The use of first person is the most practical reason that these mix-ups can be made.
I find it interesting how our minds can meld two completely different novels in to one, and how we begin to blur the details.
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