Is this a place where HH might stay?

This is a picture of the former Hotel McCurdy, which now is a retirement home. I took some pictures of the interior. I'm angry that I cropped the shot poorly, but the picture still gives you a good sense of what the place looks like. It overlooks Riverside Avenue and the river itself, so it was probably quite the swank hotel in its time. You can see old postcards of the hotel as well as the interior. I emailed the webmaster of the site I linked, and I hope he'll allow me to use some images on my site once I establish it. For now, this blog will be a tease/log of my travels and thoughts about the project. 

Should you heed warnings from reference librarians?

So, I was working at the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library this evening, and I started talking with the reference librarian who was helping me. I told him the area where I was staying, and he immediately began spinning tales of prostitution and drug busts. "Oh, you're staying on old Rt 41....that's the worst part of town....I'd be careful of what you do there...." I was waiting to be told, "Don't go out after dark," or "Be sure to pile some furniture against the door."

Well, I'm blogging from my hotel room, so it can't be that bad, right? I went to Los Bravos for dinner. It was nothing spectacular, but it was relatively cheap and fast. I'm sure I'll be hungry in 20 minutes.

Downtown Evansville

Well, I'm here - in the Indiana Room of the public library. It is a beautiful facility - similar in style to a university library - that opened 2 years ago. I'm looking through clippings related to the Mesker Zoo and have found some interesting details - I'll probably wind up seeing some of the same materials when I visit the Zoo tomorrow.

I also stopped by the old Hotel McCurdy and took some pictures. I'll post one or two if I have a chance.

Inauspicious signs?

As I was driving on Rt 71 South and then on Rt 64 W, I hit at least two butterflies (let's hope they were moths) - they were both black and tumbled to the roadway behind me as my car sped along. I'm wondering if they were Black Swallowtails. Regardless, it cannot be a good sign if I leave dead butterflies in my wake.

At least I'm in Evansville, IN. I'll head to the public library tonight and the zoo tomorrow. I'm very excited about the project. I also plan to check out the Hotel McCurdy if possible.

Overall, the drive was quick. I went from gently rolling hills to absolute plains here in Indiana. The landscape here is beautiful, but it also seems very much like what I've seen in PA in terms of the farms, etc... I did drive through part of Hoosier Forest and passed the Lincoln National Historic Site, which I may check out on the drive back.

Until my next post...

Destination: Evansville, IN and the Mesker Zoo

Today will be my first attempt to document sites mentioned during Humbert Humbert's travels with Lolita.

I will be driving to see the "concrete replica of Christopher Columbus' flagship" (Lolita, 158) today. While in Evansville, I plan to visit the public library to look at old Evansville Courier and Evansville Press newspapers as well from the late 1940s and early 1950s. There's a great collection of picture postcards online related to Evansville. I emailed the owner of the cards/site with the hope that he will allow me to use some images on the Lolita site.

I'll post more from the road. Although I am taking a major highway there, I'll be doing a bit of driving around in the area to look for routes that HH and LH may have used as well. I'll also be looking for images related to the period as well. We'll see what I find!

Thinking about interface design

So, I have an idea for two separate interfaces for On The Road With Lolita: one will be a standard e-text with hyperlinks and the other will be map-based.

The thing I need to consider more seriously is how the interfaces I create will offer a kind of argument about the novel. Web pages don't merely deliver information neutrally. Just as maps aren't neutral, Web pages aren't. So, what sort of arguments am I offer through this Web site? What am I suggesting is important about the novel by calling attention to these "sites"?

Mike gave me a great idea for using Google API for my maps, so I will probably do that.

On the Road With Lolita Web Project

I have started this blog to record my work creating the On the Road With Lolita Web project.

Let me explain the project:

I will travel around the country to sites mentioned by Humbert in Nabokov's novel. I will create audio/video/still images of those sites during my visits. The object is to create a Web site, On the Road With Lolita, that will be useful/interesting/provocative to readers (students, teachers, etc.) of the novel. I will provide information about what the site was like in the 1940s when possible and will give a sense of what the site is now. The Web Project is being created as a means of helping me to think about how Nabokov imagines postwar American tourism.

When I am on the road, I will blog about my experiences here. Before that, I will blog about the process of creating the project.

Please email me (cotugnm@muohio.edu) with questions if you're interested in learning more.