Lolita

Rating:
Summary: A True Original
Review: "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." --Oscar Wilde

Often banned by those who consider it "immoral," LOLITA is far better than just "well written." Stylistically, there are few novels in English that match Nabokov's masterpiece for the seriously playful love and use of language. And English was at least Nabokov's third tongue! LOLITA is neither a moral nor an immoral book. It is brilliantly written. But Wilde was slightly off: that is NOT all.

French academic Humbert Humbert comes to America to renew his life after stagnation and divorce in Paris. He soon meets the 12-year-old Dolores Haze. Lolita. She who reminds him so powerfully of the young Annabel he so innocently fell in love with on the Riviera when he was thirteen. The trouble is, Humbert was thirteen twenty-five years before and he wants to love Dolores as if he were thirteen again. It's just not so innocent this time around, and the fact that he knows this does not stop him.

That LOLITA is a love story cannot be convincingly denied any more than that it is a twisted tale of illicit, deranged obsession--novels, like life, often revel in ambiguity. Nabokov encourages these multiple shades of gray by employing one of the most enchanting yet unreliable narrators I've ever encountered. We see not only his obsessive, unheathily insatiable lust for the young girl, but also what life with him does to her: how she cries at night despite her brave front during the day, how she learns to manipulate him, how she grows to hate him. How much of what Humbert says can really be believed? Trying to figure that out is part of the enjoyment.

The whole book is a story of decadence and decline, of the beautiful ugliness of corruption. LOLITA is an aesthetic dream gone horribly wrong under the bright hot sun of the highways of middle America. It is also a treasure of twentieth century literature, a work of genius in how it persuades us, from time to time, to sympathize with its charming yet ruthless villain. But to say that Nabokov endorses pedophilia would be like saying that Sophocles endorses patricide and sleeping with one's mother because he wrote OEDIPUS REX. Read LOLITA and be amazed!

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece on several levels
Review: Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is one of those rare books that is both a commercial and an artistic masterpiece. Like Joyce's Ulysses it is a tour de force of language seldom encountered in English outside the works of Shakespeare. It is a carefully crafted novel rich in irony and atmosphere, a novel of great psychological insight and poignancy, a novel to rival the masters of the nineteenth century and those of the twenty-first. Some have called it "The Great American Novel," that mythical tome of authorial genius that everybody was trying to write after the second world war, and the best novel about America ever penned. Certainly Lolita can feel comfortable alongside The Scarlet Letter, Huck Finn, Moby Dick and a few others as a top drawer classic of American literature.

Of course what sets Lolita apart from other novels, at least at the time of its publication in the fifties, is its theme. A grown man making love to a pre-adolescent girl was quite a shock for a prudish America weaned on Ozzie and Harriet and Dwight Eisenhower. As such it was a courageous novel and a bit of a daring-do. It was the novel of a man ravenous for the fame and fortune he thought his talent so richly deserved, and so he took a chance.

Originally Nabokov had intended to withhold his name from the title page while dispersing throughout the narrative cryptic evidences of his presence, should he later want to claim authorship; but somehow, even before the novel's first publication in France, he was persuaded to admit paternity. Even so he remained uneasy about Lolita throughout most of his life, maintaining that other, less appreciated works of his were superior, especially Ada and Pnin, while insisting that Humbert Humbert, his nymphet-enchanted antihero, was no part of himself, merely a puppet on the master's string. After the rush of fame had subsided and he was comfortably ensconced en chateau with his fortune, Nabokov even grew weary of the attention Lolita commanded from critics and public alike, attention he saw as detrimental to his scholarly work, his autobiography (the splendid Speak, Memory) and his other works of fiction. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that more than once he spoke aloud the ancient warning and lamentation: "Beware of what you wish for. You may get it."

Still, one can survive such annoyances, and nowhere in Nabokov's life was he seen as more than slightly troubled by the very real belief that such a penetrating revelation of character (Humbert's) could only be achieved by having part of that character as one's own. This he denied to his dying day-as well he might and should. The "biographical fallacy" has a place in literary criticism, perhaps, but not here. His denial, while politically correct, was unnecessary since girls are desirable, and one can feel that desire without being a lecher. What is needed is the understanding, as with avocados and the rising of the sun, that there is a time appropriate to every purpose.

While reading Lolita for the first time, as with any rich piece of literature, you do yourself a favor and don't try to catch all the subtleties. Just read it through. Those familiar with Nabokov know full well that he plays games with the reader just as he does with his characters. He likes to show off, and besides few of us are as erudite as the very learned professor himself. You might want to take a note or two to record how you feel about Humbert and his little charge, and then compare those notes to how you feel after a second reading. Like others, I found myself moved from the amusement and tolerance of a first reading to a fully sober appreciation, after a second reading, of what a "brute" (Lo's fair description) Humbert Humbert really is. It is a curious coincidence perhaps, but this is exactly what happened with the cinematic interpretations of the novel. The first, by Kubrick from the sixties, is a brilliant comedy that has us identifying with the tragedy of Hum's obsession, while the second, Adrian Lyne's more graphic recent production, makes it clear how violated and used and ultimately destroyed Lolita really was.

If you're writing a paper, buy the annotated Lolita with notes by Alfred Appel Jr. Although the annotations add only a little to an enjoyment of the novel, and in some cases seem a bit of a pedantic stretch, they will satisfy a scholastic urge. [751 words; 3620 characters] END

Rating:
Summary: Climaxed (no pun intended) Too Early
Review: This story fell apart once it reaches its climax with way too many pages left to go. The second half of the story is far too bizarre, which is saying a lot given the subject matter of the novel as a whole. I will give Nabakov credit for tackling a tough topic ahead of his time and really getting into the mind of a distasteful individual, but I did not feel that the novel lived up to its hype. A very depressing tale.

Rating:
Summary: Not What I was Expecting
Review: I basically began reading this book because I wasn't supposed to. I had asked for a copy at our school library, and from then on was regarded as a bad child by the resident librarian. In truth, I was expecting something much more lurid, vivid and graphic. Humbert tells his story in delicate prose, and his outlook is often humorous, despite the nature of his situation. Although I have heard many different opinions of this book, mine will remain good. A true classic in my eyes.

Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading -- Despite The Subject Matter
Review: I admit, I listened instead of read Lolita out of curiosity. IMO, any time something creates as much controversy as this book, it's worth looking into. What a wonderful surprise to discover the beauty of Nabokov's language, his humor and wit. I was stunned, even while repelled by the the monstrous narrator -- yet, there was a seductive quality to Humbert that this reader can't deny. All and all, Lolita is an exceptional work, worth the time and effort to read -- which I plan to do now that I've discovered its worth -- if for no other reason than for a lesson in the beauty of language.

Rating:
Summary: An elegant and remarkable reading
Review: As a purist, I had never considered purchasing an audio book until a friend strongly advised me to get hold of Jeremy Irons reading of Lolita. As much to lighten my long dreary commute as to humor My friend, I purchased the tapes half thinking I was throwing away good money.

Nabokov's Lolita had for me, always been a singular experience, a unique book--an enigma. I was almost repelled by the thought that semiliterates would lazily buy the audio book just to 'get the story.'

Having just completed my first listening of Mr. Irons' reading, I must warn future listeners to expect to find yourself sitting in parking lots or garages still listening to the tape long after your drive has ended. This beautifully rendered reading adds so much color and often underlines or emphasizes puns, sarcasm and ironies possibly overlooked in a hurried reading.

Irons has masterfully converted the written word into a virutally perfectly adapted first person reading of this truly great novel. Highly recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet Lo
Review: He called her Lo, Lolita. He licked her like a carnie lollipop and watched her like a dog, as she kicked in furious fancy, the feeling in his balls. He loved her limbs, long Lo - and lo-and-behold, she stretched them and preened, on the stage in her head - Queen Vamp flicking the poisoned apple to dear sweet sugar, Princess Innocence - the ribbons flying in her hair pink and red, and baby blue, dark purple stain in her underpants.

God, Lo, what are you doing to me, doing to me doing to me? Lo. Lo. (Sweet and low, sweet and low) Lo. Lo. Lolita.

Rating:
Summary: Supreme feat of language
Review: Admirable achievement of language, but disturbing content. Makes you see how crucial language skills are -- because you keep on reading, and yet you realize that ordinarily, a story such as this, told by a novelist of lesser talent, would be thrown into your trash can before you got through the third chapter.

The book that is popular now in our reading group is also a narrative told by an unlikable protagonist: Brauner's "Love Songs of the Tone-Deaf". It, is, like Lolita, brilliant and funny, but dealing with some disturbing aspects of a more contemporary American culture.

Rating:
Summary: A compassionate look at Mr Humbert
Review: Handsome middle aged European male in America, Humbert Humbert has always found it so easy to seduce women. Like a rock star, his only problem is how to escape them as they make their advances to him. But he doesn't even like women. Only one thing turns him on - a thin, cute little girl, perhaps as old as fourteen or as young as nine. He calls these little girls "nymphets" and he obsesses on them. Yes, little girls are cute and sometimes precocious. Juliet was twelve. It's so easy to just revert to name-calling, call Humbert a pervert. Oh no, he's nothing like the rest of us, he's a perv. Well, he's something like the rest of us, but he takes it way too far, and in our rush to distance ourselves from the sexual practices of the ancients, the pre-Christian ancients, we have to pretend that the Juliets of the world aren't sexy. But they are, there are some very sexy 12 and 13 year olds, and Mr Humbert is just in the wrong place at the wrong time, a time and place that vilifies him. Not that he's any great shakes himself. He knows that his little Juliet is bothered by his advances but he can't help himself. The poor creature is desperately both in love and in lust with his Dolores Haze, his Lolita. And in his case, lust definitely wins out when it can, when her body is so close. I feel sorry for Mr Humbert, not because he is mentally ill. I don't think he is, though the author tells us he is. I'm a lot more charitable to Mr Humbert than he or his author are. I feel sorry for him because he is so desperately in love with a girl who doesn't love him back, and because he loses his love. The tragedy is that she is not the one for him, she is repelled and disgusted and depressed by him, and she's just too damn young for him. But the poor man loves her to distraction. The story line is compelling, even moreso when Lolita finds herself attracted to a different older man. So - with our same young Lolita now in love with a man as old as Mr Humbert, age suddenly takes itself out of the equation (though the author tells us that Humbert destroyed Lolita, which I don't buy). Lolita just isn't into poor Hum. She wants to be the one who loves, not the one who is loved, so she can't respond to a man who desperately loves her. Hum played his cards wrong with this girl. He should have played hard to get. Let her continue to be the one making the advances, as she started out doing, and keep her on a string. He shouldn't have made any sexual advances to her. She wasn't ready for that. He should have just let her lead, sometimes allowing her to do what she wanted, sometimes not. I think in this way, sooner or later he would have had her for life, perhaps when she hit her later teens. It reminds me of what Proust says about love being kindled by pain, and of the Proust characters who are afraid to show their loved ones how much they care. Not sorry to be so politically incorrect on this book. I'm not gonna line up with the rest of the rock throwers taking aim at a pervert. I just feel sorry for the poor man. And no, I don't feel sorry for some sleezeball who rapes little girls. Mr Humbert isn't that. He is Romeo, only older, and doesn't know how to win his particular Juliet, though his rival sure knows how. Another case of a young girl failing to appreciate the man who loves her, and instead falling for a guy who doesn't really care and just wants to play. Like that doesn't happen every day.

Rating:
Summary: a literary neophytes thoughts on "lolita"
Review: It is ironic that the same people who would dismiss "Lolita" as pedophilic pornographic trash, defend just about anything else ever put into print. I dont see "Lolita" as being anything but a love story. True it is a love story about an adult man and a young girl, but i believe Lo is more a representation of Humbert's (and to a lesser extent, Nabokovs) ideal woman. I dont think her age in the work should be taken to a literal extreme. I believe Humbert's psychological growth as it pertains to women and romantic involvement ceased with the death of his first true love when he was a young man. His love for Lo was just an extension of his love for that young girl of long ago. please dont think that i condone Humbert's actions outside of the context of the book. I do not. I think that anyone engaging in anything remotely like what is portrayed in the book is despicable, but isnt that the good thing about books? we can imagine, objectively, thoughts and ideas we would either never imagine otherwise or reject out of hand.