Amory was kind enough to inform me that today would be Vladimir Nabokov's 109th Birthday celebration so I would like to share one of his sentences that I read last week and simply haven't been able to forget.

"Mine host very humorously called him "Herr Professor." "Well, how is the Herr Professor tonight?" he would ask, coming over to him, and the man would ponder for some time in silence and then, with a wet underlip pushing out from under the pipe like that of a feeding elephant, he would answer something neither funny nor polite."
--Vladimir Nabokov "The Aurelian"

Well, actually that's two sentences but adding the prior sentence both set the scene for the next sentence and saved me from the awkward business of starting a quote with a quote.

Maybe one of the things I like about Nabokov is that he doesn't have heroes. All of his main characters are unsavory. In fact, his minor characters are disturbing as well. Reading about "Herr Professor" in the above sentence makes me recoil but still he's presented so vividly that I can't help but be drawn to him with the appeal of familiarity.