Lolita

Rating:
Summary: Utter rubbish masquerading as good literature
Review: Many have praised Lolita as an example of first class literature and highly polished art. Much of this praise derives from Nobokov's reputation as a writer, his frequent literary allusions, ample dashes of French, and his clever use of the English language. However impressive, in my mind these attributes aren't enough to compensate for the deplorable nature of his subject matter (dressed up pedophilia), and his offensive depictions of women as sex objects (Dolores/Lolita) or brainless slugs (his two wives).

So what if Nabokov has written other notable novels? So what if he is fluent in three languages and writes well in English? So what if his characters are rich and three dimensional? Are these adequate excuses for the sick relationships he describes for his pathetic characters, or his obnoxious, degrading, chauvinistic attitudes towards women?

In my mind Lolita is nothing more than trash wrapped up in a pretty package by a famous writer. People continue to be drawn to it (men mostly, I suspect) by its titillating subject and Nobokov's reputation as a writer. They use the excuse of "good literature" to read a lurid book that they otherwise would be too embarassed to pick up. It provides little else but mental masturbation and is nothing more than an arrogant, self indulgent exercise in language manipulation.

I wouldn't recommend this novel to my worst enemy.

Rating:
Summary: Laborious Read
Review: At a recent English language conference in St. Petersburg, a Russian woman asked an American poet after his reading what he thought of Nabokov. The poet was smart enough not to mention Lolita. I confessed to my colleagues that I had just read the novel. Three of them admitted that they had tried but could not venture far into the story. The "controversial masterpiece" bored me. It took three months for my usually voracious mind to read it, and I fully understand why a Russian woman would quickly abort it. Early in the book, Nabokov delivers a punch to our gut with this statement, "In my self-made seraglio, I was a radiant and robust Turk, deliberately, in the full consciousness of his freedom, postponing the moment of actually enjoying the youngest and frailest of his slaves." This twisted sympathy with the Ottomans would be enough to send the book to the kindling pile of any dacha. Nabokov's blows continued until this line near the end of the book--"which reminds one of the tenth or twentieth soldier in the raping queue who throws the girl's black shawl over her white face so as not to see those impossible eyes while taking his military pleasure in the sad, sacked village"--forced me to recognize that time had wasted away on his fantasy. Perhaps the Russian women were smarter than I am by abandoning the book more quickly.

Were people so ignorant of sexuality and race in the mid-20th century, or was Nabokov just a pretentious pedant? I suspect the latter since my mama ain't nobody's fool. The writer/reader in me can respect the author's attempt to probe the recesses of the male mind. However, the educator role that played in a men's prison teaching GED skills knows this preoccupation with the sexuality of pre-adolescents as an evolutionary obstacle. But tradition seems to indicate that it's quite normal. In fact, in most states child molestation carries a sentence of one year or probation, while burning an unoccupied building locks a man away for twenty years. (What percentage of judges is female?)
The references to people of African descent in only derogatory terms boiled my blood. The innate racism of the main character (or writer?) does not limit itself to the darker skin: "The plump, glossy little Eskimo girls with their fish smell, hideous raven hair and guinea pig faces, evoked even less desire in me...Nymphets do not occur in polar regions." Why did Humbert's travels with Lolita never take him past tent dances of the 40s and 50s to see the beauty of integrated bands and dancers?

Nabokov has written that he does not believe in the didactic approach to literature. If he is not trying to teach, inform, or entertain, then this book was only written for his wife, controversy or literati masturbation. The first reason would be charming if he had not been promiscuous after their meeting. The second provides insight to the capitalist culture and the continued discussion of this book in the US. And the third possibility leads me to say, "The poor, confused, over-educated intelligentsia. Sometimes even I pity us." A Russian colleague of mine was also reading Lolita when I was. He seemed to like the word play of Nabokov. If such games interest you, Lolita could be your style. However, this guy also listens to synthetic music (Euro-thump) and does not know any real players.
The revolutionary in me tends to believe that consideration of this novel as "great literature" continues a tradition of the literate, upper class to trick the newly educated into a fictive world of negativism. I must admit that I only read Lolita to gain some background for the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Nabokov's wife, Vera.

Rating:
Summary: My Impressions of the Young Nymphette.
Review: Before I read this novel, I had always just walked by it every time I saw it, turn up my nose, and mutter something about why anyone in their right mind would want to read a book about pedophilia.

Then I read it.

My opinion of the book changed.

The forlorn Humbert Humbert loses his love in Europe (his native land), and discovers lust and obsession in the United States. This book gives flesh to the concepts of trying to own another living human being, and how this human being is fickle about emotions, having been forced to express them all at an early age. Jealousy plays a part too in Humbert's life, as it would in any ephemeral relationship being only flesh-deep.

It is worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible ... and consitently misunderstood
Review: A fantastic book: that it should be considered meerly pornography is a ludicrous idea to anyone that reads it. The fundamental paradox here is the juxtaposition of the apparent innocence of the heroine, and the fictional author's longing for that innocence; and the result that he regresses into something inferior to his naive state with his childhood sweethart, and Lolita is thrust into an adulthood that her negligent mother and automatic culture had not prepared her for. Ultimately, a satire on the stagnation of the post-war world; Humbert himself originates from a Europe that he detests for its degradation; but the chief concept in the book is the loss of innocence in the modern world, through the ready acceptance of all the adult cliches by these children unsupported by any pertinent history. Lolita herself is the far from the ultimate model of innocence; and although Humbert is undoubtedly the instigator, her exposure to the modern world allows her to simultaneously appear mature to Humbert (he describes her as seducing him) whilst remaining the perpectual child. The love affair almost genuinely attains the innocent state that the fictional author would have: it is the clinging together of two children: Humbert utterly dependent on her for all that constitutes his purpose, and she unable to live as an orphan without him. The most distrubing aspect of the book is unequivocally the voice of the narator; and although we should expect his integrety to be highly compromised, the casual cruelty he demonstrates towards almost all the characters (especially his first and second wife) constantly reminds us that we deal with someone who is driven by his desire to regain the innocence that he has lost. This innocence can never again be attained: and so it is through a powerful self deception that he projects his apparently innate and immutable state to the reader. This is ultimately the only indication of Humbert's guilt: the entire novel is supposed to have been written in retrospect, and the initial lust that he feels towards Lolita is still present long after his loss of her and his apprehension by the police; note his sly assides about the girl scouts in his prison encyclopedia. This first struck me when he describes how his first wife had an affair with a ridiculous russian general, who now drives a taxi. In his private narration, he informs the reader: "I was happy to wait until we were alone ... and then really hurt her".
For me, one the most fascinating aspects of the book was the introduction, written by one of the fictional characters in the book; and hence controlled by Nabokov. Although the cause of a considerable amount of confusion initially, it provides a valuable insight into Nabokov's purpose for the book. Essentially, it constists of an enormously pretentious psychatrist's analysis of the account of Humbert, and the old cliches ("...Lolita represents a warning to all of us, parents, moralists ..." etc.) indicate that this is Nabokov's method of pre-empting the expected rush of interpretations. The most interesting thing about it is, however, how subversive it is: when discussing Humbert, the character asserts: "although we hate (Humbert), his singing violin can evoke a love of his (Humbert's) devotion" (I paraphrase, since my memory is not entirely effective). It is this dismissal of the novel as merely abstracted art, and the naked lust Humbert describes as a form of artistic love, that constitutes the subversive element: and the fictional writer is guilty of the same brand of self-delusion as Humbert imposes upon himself, by depicting the activites of Humbert as the descriptions of an anguished lover. Humbert is no less cruel about Lolita herself: at one point he purchases "some bananas for my monkey", with the conscious understanding of his power over Lolita; himself as the organ-grinder. We must be clear on this when we discuss the book: Humbert's obsession is not beutiful or transcendental, and however scintilating the language the Nabokov employs, it ultimately is designed to portray Humbert as the pretentious, self loathing, self deluding molester that Humber labours so hard to hide from us. The book is fascinating in its fantastically successful attempts to describe a man's pathological obsession with the innocence that that obsession has ultimately removed from him: and as such, is a parable for modern life, even in non-sexual terms. This book is the most modern I have ever read: the author has a preoccupation with the effect of constant analysis of narative, which both Lolita and Humbert have been over exposed to: and, even ignoring the sexual aspects, is enormously contemporary.

Rating:
Summary: Utterly Brilliant -But Can We Please Get the Facts Straight?
Review: The book itself is absolutely incredible, as more people than one have mentioned before me. The words flow as if they were spontaneous, disguising the fact that it must have been incredibly hard to work in the breadth of vocabulary and allusions. The problem I have with so many reviews is that they make reference to "the original Russian." Lolita was originally written in English, Nabokov's third language.
This is truly a must read. I urge everyone to get to a book store as soon as possible, and buy this book!

Rating:
Summary: tickling your morals
Review: Reading Lolita I am reminded of my male friends who call foul on the "feminization" the world. I loved it. The book is a near masterpiece of combining the lust of man to control his lover, though curiously, still hold her in breathless reverence as if her actions aren't of a woman trying not to drown in her man's oppression. I was aroused by the book seeing the undercurrent of contempt most authors have for their readers was missing. Nabakov went naked, let his manhood wave about, it felt good to crow on over both his character's strengths and weaknesses. The book is about the machinations of a man when he steps out and allows his viseral inclinations to lead him. The book is heavy with syrup of the siren Lolita, however, I found the most tantalizing aspects of the book not to be Lolita's actions and suggestions but his sideways, fingers crossed, hopeful fumbles at love that was both true to life and hidden by morality to be incarnate evil. The story is weakness, innocence and sexual tension cast under the aegis of immoral lust and beauty.

Rating:
Summary: Why novels are written
Review: Those who criticize the book because of its dealing with a "dirty" subject such as pedophilia are really missing most of the point. Of course, it's not so much the specific problem that Humbert Humbert has, but rather that we, as an audience, are able to sympathize with him. Or perhaps it was just me. The longing, the hilarious thoughts, the psychotic actions of this man -- after so much of it, I as a reader almost felt as if I was Humbert -- as if I were longing for those very things. The foreword to this novel (although fictional) points out one of the most important aspects of the work: the sexual subject matter is presented without a single profane word. And yet we know exactly what he's talking about at all times, perhaps even moreso because of the roundabout way in which it is presented. There's that underlying theme about a European frowning down on the uneducated America and its inhabitants (who apparently all speak bad French), but I was less taken by that and more completely impressed with the way I became Humbert Humbert when I was reading the novel, for it is a feat that so few authors are ever truly able to accomplish - total captivation.

Rating:
Summary: Specific Gravity of Emotion
Review: This novel is supposedly one of the famous unreviewables, one might say, and for quite a few reasons, one might add. Obviously, the subject matter of "Lolita" has always left some readers uneasy, to say the least, but as a European, I took it for what it was, a brilliantly written story of love, with a somewhat shifted specific gravity of emotion. The protagonist is in a way [handicapped], for his emotional development was arrested somewhere in the early teens, and ever since, despite the burden of consciousness that adulthood brings, he is unable to restrain his lust whenever the special circumstances arise - that is whenever he finds himself in the vicinity of a nymphette, as he explains the phenomenon to himself, or in fact any young girl resembling his object of love from the past, to be precise. Faced with the loss of the beloved, he constantly seeks the same tint of emotion, making him more and more ridiculous the older he is. Here lies the tragedy of arrested development, for not only Humbert has a serious problem, which he is unable to resist to get into repeatedly, to finally succumb to passion for Dolores, the famous Lolita, but also because he is aware of the wrongness of his actions, his tendencies, his life - for we have to realize that for Humbert, all other things ceased to exist, his life evolved around only one planet, like an abandoned moon in the far corner of the galaxy, where the rest of the society never ventures, although being at the same time aware of the moon's existence. It's a classic tragedy, a modern counterpart of the Oedipus myth, viewed rather from the perspective of the elder, not the younger.

If you haven't read the book, you might wonder about the origin of the immense popularity of "Lolita", a book which was successfully filmed twice, despite the relatively disturbing subject matter. Nabokov displayed an enormous civil courage, having dared to publish the novel while the book might just as well turn out to have been his literary grave. The novel is still popular because many people recognize the helplessness of the protagonist, who found himself facing the insolvable problem, exceeding his abilities to resist. The subject may be easily extrapolated to all other phenomena of humanity, for the human being is fundamentally weak, prone to both a mischief, and a cardinal sin of all possible flavors. Ever since the publication of "Lolita", the characters from this novel became immortal, having entered the mass conscience, augmenting the vocabularies of all nations - exactly what we think of the archetype, the image so convincing that all that is conceived later in the imagination of other authors, is referred to it, where the image serves as a basis for comparison from which there is no escape.

Only one question remains to be answered, and that is why is it that no other book involving a similar theme ever enjoyed such popularity, why weren't these books as revered as "Lolita" has been. The answer, simply, is that no one ever came close to the literary genius of Vladimir Nabokov, and what under his pen appeared to be a masterpiece, coming from other authors appeared to be a kind of deviant tripe, a good example may be one of the earlier novels by McEwan, namely "The Cement Garden". Nabokov's book is a psychological study and a beautiful love story, something we can't deny despite the inevitable uneasiness, whereas other attempts to write about that specific gravity of emotion were nothing short of obnoxious.

Finally, I think that there is no point in recommending this book to anyone. Some readers will have a strict opinion before they attempt to read this novel, if ever, and others will be attracted to the subject matter, and will never finish, because their expectations of the sensational material will never be met. Yet others will pass on this book, and that's just as well. I think that if you like excellent writing, if you like good literature of the highest order, you will not only read Lolita, but also other novels and stories by Vladimir Nabokov - and you will not need a recommendation to do that; you will explore Nabokov on your own, guided by the longtime reader's intuition.

Rating:
Summary: Huh??
Review: It took me a week to get through the first sixty pages of Lolita. That should have been my first clue it was going to be a long and treacherous read; despite the fact the novel is only 300 pages. There were moments in the novel when I swore Nabokov had a brilliant and intellectual point to make. Yet as quick as the turn of a page he prooved me terribley wrong. The character of Humbert Humbert was at times remorseful and knowing of the what he was doing to Dolores Haze; therefore I couldn't pity him and his insanity. Dolores Haze seemed to me to be a coniving woman trapped in a thirteen year olds body. So, I really didn't feel too appalled by the situation she allowed herself to be a part of with Humbert. In ways I think I may read this again-dictionary in one hand of course (as to try and decode Nabokov's word choice)-if only to try and make sense of why someone would write a novel like this. The characters, had absolutley no impact. I didn't feel the slightest shock for the subject matter. All I could think was "wow I actually managed to read the whole novel."

Rating:
Summary: My Lolita
Review: I first decided to readthis cook after seeing the newer version of the movie, starring Dominique Swain. Even after reading the first fifteen pages you'll notice important differences between the book and both of the "Lolita" movies. I feel that after reading the book neither movie gives Nabokov's complex plot or characters justice. This book is something you have to read the grasp.
The book starts slow and honestly somewhat dull with the main character, Humbert Humbert, alluding to the fact that he is in jail for the murder of someone and was promted to write down his tale by his lawyer, John Ray Jr. It starts with a flashback to the days of Hum's youth and his first love-Annabel. It leads up to years later his first encounter with, "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful" Dolores Haze or Lolita as he calls her. Humbert quicklyfalls in love with her and begins a relationship with the 12 year old. The story tracks their affair and the eventual downfall of their romance.
I really liked this book. One reason is because the writer uses all types of literary games. For instance certain names have secret meanings-if you rearrange the character Vivian Darkbloom's name (and change one o to an a) it spells out Vladmir Nabokov. The author uses certain coinages such as "nymphet" to describe a certain type of desirable girl between the ages of 9-14. He uses sharp contrasts to present the extremity of certain points such as when Lolita and Humbert are together on vacation Humbert describes it as their, "Paradise lit with hell flames". The autor messes with words and sayings in English as well as French (the author learned both). He creates lyrics with puns to create small poems throughout the book, "The Squirl and his Squirrel, the Rabs and their rabbits, have certain obscure and peculiar habits, male hummingbirds make the most exquisite rockets, the snake when he walks holds his hands in his pockets." This example is a nonsense poem Humbert writes to Lolita to make her laugh. It seems nearly impossible to find all the jokes throughout Lolita. The writers of Time magazine were quoted saying that "Lolita is a major work of fiction; it is also a shocking book...both intensely lyrical and wildly funny." It is quite an amazing book full of word-play and is especially amazing when you consider that the man who wrote it learned English as his third language (Russian and Frnech were his first 2). Nabokov actually described Lolita as his love affair with the English language.
I also like tis book because the character Lolita is a symbolic representation of America. The write who was born in Russia satires America's vulgar and commercial excess while still showing the beauty of it all and his faithgul adoration of it. He does this be having young Lolita love bland pop music, junk food, Coca Cola and movie star magazines. The character Humber refers to Lolita saying, "She it was whom ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of every foul poster." In this way Humbert sees Lolita as Nabokov sees America-filthy and beautiful, flawed and sweet. The book show the love-hate relationships that occur with one's facsination in a certainthing, and hopefully balance out in the end.
Many peoploe though this book was uninteresting due to it's lack of sexual content. Many more people felt it was extremely immoral to write a book with a plot concerning a man's desire for a 12 year old child, when the book first came out in 1955 it broke many taboos held standard in society and literature. Nowadays, with sexuality of every kind being presented in the media this book, which in fact never directly mentions the act of sex, is quite tame. Yet I feel it is not just the "classic story of sexual obcession" as some have suggested, or a story of a perverted & twisted old man Humbert. It is a story written by the charcter Nabokov created who is trying to record and find outwhat happened, where he went wrong, and finally how he can learn to forgive himself for robbing Lolita of her normal childhood. It is about love, self-exploration, and revenge. It maps out 42 years of a man's life-journey and is struggles with mental illness throughout, as he tries to learn how to stop loving the things he can never really have.
This is an awesome story & I reccomend it to any mature older teen. When I first picked up this book I thought it'd be O.K. but it surpassed my expectations and raised my standard of good literature. Nabokov's lyrical way of telling a love stroy with twists and serious consequences is far better than I expected it to be. This is a wonderful contemporary classic that you simply must read.