The textbook’s fourth pattern is easily identifiable in Lolita, if anything because Nabokov is so fond of it.
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”- A, B, C.
The ease of this sentences, the way B follows A and C follows B with enamored pace sets the tone for this particular excerpt.
“My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
The rhythm is established long before it’s made obvious through “Lo. Lee. Ta.” We hear the voice of an infatuated man letting his inner mood taking control over his sentences, a man that moves from sighing sentences to short, more precise ones.
Nabokov tells us about the taping, and then shows us. He’s convincing the reader about the spell the girl has on him without seeming over-eager or persuasive, simply enthralled. We thus get the feeling he’s speaking to himself, his eyes gone as mouth slowly taps his ideas.
“She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”
Sentences in pattern 4 are scared here and there but these shorter ones are majority in the passage. The use of repetition “She was” continues the rhythm. A paced, controlled tapping that reflects a state of mind, the brevity of the sentences never accelerate the pace, nor do they allow it to hyperventilate.
That’s not the case with the following:
“I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively.”
The rythim here is more eager, less ephemeral, more present. It also reflects that in these sentences, he’s stating fact, not feeling- “But in my arms she was always Lolita” versus “He owned a luxurious hotel in the Rivera.”
Though not terribly diverse, this second passage is reacher in diversity of sentence style, for it reflects a different state of mind. The character is the same, he’ll never be flowery or showy, but his mood certainly changes- the first excerpt is hypnotic, the second factual.
"We get the impression that he is talking to himself." That's a pretty good summary of what makes VN's style unique. And Bellow? He is the man on the barstool next to you, overeducated but still just folks, telling you a tale. Clinton? He speaks to the world, of course. When VN says, "I'm going to pass around some glossy postcards," he is, like Eliot in "The Waste Land," mimicking a typical voice, someone else's voice from some other context. This further scrambles his technique. "Bellow entwines the meaningful and mundane" is a pretty good summary of his style. He is speaking to a specific reader: smart but unpretentious. Later, he started to complain that this kind of reader was disappearing. He uses "running style"; Nabokov mostly uses parataxis. Running style is immediate, like someone talking. Not so with parataxis; it leave gaps; the reader must figure it out; it interrupts the flow. VN's irony gives him maximum flexibility.
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