Lolita

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Summary: The best treatise on perversity.
Review: You all know the story: Humbert Humbert needs a nymphet, finds Lolita, is left by Lolita, etc. The astonishing thing (well, one of the astonishing things) is the extent to which Nabokov, by gracing Humbert with a fertile memory and florid prose style, makes Humbert un-monstrous; Lolita seems the kittenish villain, if anything, by her refusals to cooperate with Humbert's desperate domination. The other little miracle is that the question of societal vs. personal morals, especially in this tale of molestation, is never really raised. Read it backwards and forwards, however, and you find the sad tale of a ravished maiden who nonetheless retains some spunk and escapes her demonic pursuer. Either way it's a sweet sadness you'll find in few other books. Nabokov's prose is not, as some would have it, 'subtle'; in in Lolita, the alliterative blasts and 'literariness' of writing are brought to a new prominence. Aside from the titanic howl of the opening, I myself find the travelogue section to be full of the kind of hyper-charged 'little moments' that separate VN from more sensationalistic novelists who would be unable to sustain the tale past seduction and destruction. Let's not forget humor, for which we can forgive any amount of perversity in any work of art; VN is no dark-sider, even Humbert saves himself from bathos with constant worldly humor. It is the laughter of the damned, but that has always been the best kind. To recommend this book is fruitless; everyone who has read it has read it, and everyone else who can read will read it. But savor the quiet moments, I beg you.

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Summary: MY FOURTH DEGREE BURN
Review: Oh, Lolita, why would we need another movie, another taunt? Lolita, you coat by brain and my heart with sulphur-love, you dribble down my throat, my post-nasal stripper, explode my stomach where butterflies die, down my quivering legs, my trembling, effervescent ape-knees. Do not taunt me anymore. Stay contained in a book, do not explode upon the screen. Let such a humble Humbert contain your existence between the first and last pages, let the book flaps curl around your straight hips and downy limbs, nap within the folds of so much love, and sleep. Sleep and smile and turn toward your window in Humber-slumber, let the morning light of our frustrated fixations stream beyond your silky, soiled curtains and settle upon your lips where spite and lolly-pop juice cease ... just for a while

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Summary: The Voice
Review: What a voice! To hear LOLITA brought to life by Jeremy Irons....incredibl

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Summary: beauty and the beast
Review: When I first read Lolita (in the undergraduate kingdom by the sea), an old professor, almost drooling, taught it to us as a beautiful, doomed love story: an old man and the pretty young thing who could not appreciate him for his many talents. Older now, and wiser (and fainter too as Wisdom is), I find myself searching for other delinquent Palaces--and return to Lolita to discover this time the repellent tale of a pedophile and his wonderful, wonder-filled lies. While the book bogs in the travelogue sections, I was left with the feeling that Nabakov had grabbed American culture by its, well, underbelly and given it a good shake. I loved the preface and afterward with their lies almost as much as I loved Humbert's tale of self-induced woe-begone. Nabokov is almost as good a liar as his creature

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Summary: In the Kingdom by the sea...
Review: Nabokov has the most powerful, yet subtle prose style of the 20th century and it is in his masterpiece of Lolita that we see him at his best. The story follows the obsession of an intellectual, Humbert-Humbert, for his landlady's 12 year old daughter, Lolita. On the most simple level, the story revolves around this absurd love and Humbert's perpensity for pre-pubescent girls. On a deeper level, it is an epic attack on the norms of conventional love, for the reader finds him/her self symphathizing with Humbert-Humbert and the manipulation that one would assume to emerge out of the behavior of a lust driven child molester is more benign than that of his victim and her lover. Nabokov creates an introcate struggle between Apollonian and Dionysian principles in the most unlikely and even unlikable characters. Yet their entire struggle is told from a most sardonic, unapologizing and intellectualy superior perspective. Annabele Lee is not Lolita, but Humbert-Humbert never comes to terms with that

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Summary:

Jeremy Irons reads LOLITA. Unabridged. Uncensored.
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The performance everyone is talking about:

"Irons' inspired reading is not to be missed." - The Chicago Tribune

"Grab a 12-pack of AA batteries, strap on your Walkman and go-go-go." - The New York Observer

"Bedtime Story of the Week" - Entertainment Weekly

"A beautifully produced recording that pushes the boundaries of the audio medium." - The Library Journal

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Summary: Humbert Humber: Passionate Poet
Review: "BUT I AM NO POET"- HUMBERT HUMBERT... Humbert Humbert: accomplished pedophile, murderer, and above all, master of verbal gymnastics. His memoirs in LOLITA are saturated with deft poetical tributes to his beloved nymphet, Dolores Haze. Alliteration abound, Humbert dramatically relates his exploits in a self-proclaimed "fancy prose style", consisting of laborious descriptions laden with pulsating vivacity and startling preciseness. Whether he admits it or not, Hum ain't dumb when it comes to rhythm. Vladimir Nabokov's Humbert Humbert certainly deserves a pat on the back for a killer style, for never can someone tell a tale the way this man did in LOLITA.

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Summary: Unusually charming love story.
Review: The theme which was never explored in the literature before. Brilliant, new concept of a relation between a man and "not yet a woman" breaking all the schemes in the sphere of customs

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Summary: Nabokov's controversial book flaunts a flawless style...
Review: Flaubert said that he longed to write a book that was nothing but style...years later Nabokov writes his _Lolita_, the story of Humbert Humbert, a nuerotic, older man w/ a fetish for the female phenomenon he labels as nymphs... What can one say? The character of Lolita is a staple in literature--coquettish, sly, desirable, young... Nabokov walks the line of erotica and pathology as he traces Humbert's fascination and eventual destruction as he mingles with the forbidden...all in a perfect prose style that hints at the sublime...

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Summary: A classic work of contemporary American fiction.
Review: The term "tragicomedy" is often misapplied, but in the case of _Lolita_, it is the only fitting term. Although the narrator, a European struggling with American traditions, is dark, driven, and suffering from a tragic obsession, he can also be unintentionally quite funny as he describes the people around him with relentless animosity. Nabokov of course leaves us to wonder whether he is as attractive to all women as he claims to be, but there is a sensitivity in the portrait that gives a man who would otherwise be disgusting an added dimension, and which ultimately makes the reader sorry for him rather than judgemental. This book remains timely despite, or perhaps because of, its long history of criticism, beginning with a publisher who said, "I think it should be buried under a rock for a thousand years."