couleur locale

“Couleur locale has been responsible for many hasty appreciations,” Nabokov once wrote, “and local colour is not a fast colour.” What did he mean?

I think it’s rather like watching The Full Monty from your sofa in West Virginia and thinking ‘That’s just so awesome.’ Then visiting a Job Centre in Sheffield, England for the first time and realising maybe it isn’t.

Or, like meeting cousin Dusty – the most colourful character in the world – and thinking ‘He’s pretty awesome, too’. Then spending a lot of time with him, or somehow being related to him, and realising Yeah, he may be all Couleur and all, but there’s a thin line between awesome and…uhm….well, yeah. That’s still kind of awesome.

You know. That sort of thing.

(*Posted with caveat: Author knows bunk about literary criticism.)