Lolita

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Summary: Nabokov's Masterpiece of Love and Memory
Review: The most bold and poignant art may prove controversial at first. Controversy aside, this is art.
Nabokov became quite a successful writer due to this novel, and once you read it there should be no question why.

Here Nabokov has created one of the most timeless, often times enigmatic, characters in literature - known to us humbly as Humbert Humbert. What the author accomplished so well was not so much in the exploration of a pathological obsession, but the firm establishment of a logical, thinking, reasonable person in love. Mr. Humbert takes the reader along a reminiscent journey of passion and fixation, of love and lust, of control and vulnerability. Without giving way to crude engagements, it becomes a lucid, fascinating memoir of a man who loved a girl named Dolores - whose age the reader can easily forget in the tangle of emotion, psychology and memory.
But Humbert does not let himself off easily, either. And once he has adeptly, though untriumphantly, captured the sympathy of his reader, he reminds us why he is a monster.

This is a most convincing and intriguing narrative, wrought with erudite references and lots of humor. The exacting detail with which it is executed proves why the artist at work here was no less than a genius. Nabokov showcased his talent in this novel and became for posterity a master of--at the very least--20th century FICTION.

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Summary: Get the annotated version.
Review: By some odd quirk of fate I am the first Amazon reviewer of the "Annotated Lolita" version by Alfred Appel. It has about 140 pages of indexed notes which will help identify some of the more obscure references in "Lolita".

My 10-year old copy is literally falling apart. Best book ever.

Someone said Nabokov wrote the screenplay for Kubrick's movie, which is true. However Kubrick did not use it, which is why that movie bears little resemblance to the book. Lyne's movie is much closer to it, although, as in the earlier movie, the crucial last page and a half was left out. It is perhaps the best page and a half of the book.

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Summary: "I, on my part, was as naive as only a pervert can be."
Review: I have no real excuse for not reading "Lolita" before this late date. It's certainly a book that crops up in conversation a great deal. I watched the James Mason film version of the book years ago--perhaps that's what put me off. I recently watched the Jeremy Irons version and loved it. I suppose part of me asked why myself why I'd want to read a book that is essentially the ramblings of a middle-aged pervert. Anyway, I decided that I'd procrastinated long enough, and it was time to get serious and find out what all the fuss is about.

The story is narrated by middle-aged Humbert Humbert. He's a pedophile--although he's tried denying it, tried disguising it, and tried channeling his baser instincts, but as luck would have it, Humbert finds himself as the lodger at the home of a buxom, lonely widow, Charlotte Haze and 12-year-old daughter, Lolita. Humbert doesn't particularly even like Lolita--he actually finds her rather dull, but she becomes a vessel for the fantasies left by Humbert's unfulfilled first love affair.

Due to the subject matter, the book was, at times, rather difficult to read, and it is a tribute to Nabokov's skill as a writer that I was gripped by this story. Humbert Humbert is at his most 'human' (introspective) during his pre- and post-Lolita phases. Once Humbert crosses the boundaries of ethical behaviour and begins a physical relationship with Lolita, there is no going back. At times, Humbert congratulates himself for his cleverness and calls himself a "magician," and then at other times, Humbert seems to realize how despicable he truly is. Unfortunately, the occasional flash of insight is too pale and fleeting to release Humbert from his obsession with his "nymphet" and so Humbert accepts his enslavement and ultimate fate. As the novel develops, Humbert relates his seduction of Lolita and his subsequent relationship towards the child. His manipulative behaviour with Lolita was nauseating, and he acknowledges that Lolita has "absolutely nowhere else to go." Humbert keeps it that way--and turns Lolita into his personal prostitute. Vain, selfish Humbert is a despicable character and at no point did I feel one iota of sympathy for the man. His ability to focus solely on his destructive, obsessive needs is chilling. And yet while I despised the character of Humbert, the story was compelling. How did Nabokov manage this? The brilliant ending of the novel is a triumph of literature, and the words gave me goose bumps. "Lolita" is one of the best books I have ever read--displacedhuman.

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Summary: Lo-Lee-Ta
Review: There is no correct way of approaching "Lolita." One obviously undertakes the book with the misapprehension that Nabokov's novel is brimming with detailed passages of pedaphelic sex acts; that it is a revolting book of unfathomable bile written by a depraved perverted Russkie with a predilection for minors. After all the litigation and fervent rebuking of this book and its author, how could the novel not be detestably lascivious? I was positive I would be repelled by Nabokov and his obscene lil' book, but I was thankfully wrong. The novel is hardly as licentious as its detractors once purported (it certainly fails to reach the apogee of sexual expatiation established by Miller's "Tropic of Cancer"). History would have you believe that this book is appealing solely to the prurient interest. That's unfortunate, because Nabokov brings an immense beauty to an otherwise hideous subject matter. His inimitable prose is remarkably unique - he is unquestionably one of the best writers of the century. The very fact that Nabokov can arouse an ounce of sympathy for the despicable Humbert Humbert places his artistic integrity far above that of his peers. I was so perfidiously hesitant to read this book that I first read "Pale Fire," to see if his style even appeared as a blip on my trajectory. As with most books akin to "Lolita" ("Ulysses"), it has garnered an unwarranted reputation that precedes it; a miasma so detrimental most people despise it without having even read a page. Nabokov's work here is so sprawling in its artistry, so beautiful in its playfulness, and so absolutely keen in its form that it is easily one of the best books of the 20th Century. If you're searching for one of the most awkwardly brilliant love stories ever (if you dug Harold and Maude), then don't hesitate to read "Lolita." As a word of caution, however, it must be said that this book galvanizes a long tandem of obscure vocabulary that will no doubt tax the reader's verbal knowledge. But this does not in anyway vitiate the pleasure of reading it. However, if you're reticent to begin reading a book so full of terms, I suggest viewing Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation starring James Mason, Peter Sellers, and Sue Lyons in the title role. Either way, "Lolita" is well worth your time and highly recommended!

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Summary: Light of my life - Lo. Lee. Ta.
Review: I had barely opened Lolita and I was already confused. Just the first paragraph of the foreword had me wonder if anyone by the name of "Clarence Choate Clark, Esq., now of the District of Columbia bar" (3) could be taken seriously as a lawyer, or if the "Poling Prize" (3) even existed, and if it did, why it would be awarded to a work entitled "Do the Senses make Sense?" (3).

This is Nabokov's twisted sense of humor. Only halfway through the novel did I remember this foreword whose author's name and pretentiousness I scoffed at - and realize it was really an epilogue to the novel Nabokov had written himself. Nabokov mocks his characters, in turn, himself, and finally his readers for believing him. Yet this mockery is at once hilarious, poignant, and beautiful. As one who, unconsciously or not, judges books by their first and last sentences, I fell in love with Lolita before Nabokov even introduced her, which was probably his intention. The novel begins with:

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down to the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." (9)

The sheer poetry in these fragments of sentences immediately answers the unasked question of why the novel is titled the way it is. (Nabokov has an answer for everything, as exemplified in his meticulous attention to details) The repeated alliteration in each fragment explores the sensual delight merely from uttering each of the syllables in her name: the soft lull of the double l's until that gentle yet firm finale at the t. Upon realizing this effect, I almost lamented the interjection of the extra syllables in "life, fire" and "My sin, my soul." So persuasive were these first words that I was ready to read the rest of the novel as poetry.

Nabokov uses poetry to take away from the reality of situation. Humbert's first encounter with Quilty, for example, has a particularly dreamlike quality as the very dialogue that takes place rhymes:

" "Where the devil did you get her?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said: the weather is getting better."
"Seems so."
"Who's the lassie?"
"My daughter."
"You lie - she's not."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said: July was hot." " (127)

Aural qualities aside, the poetry is pretentious. I had to put down the novel after the first three pages or so merely to reread Annabel Lee just to catch the allusions. But the pretentiousness is intended. Pretentious poetry throughout the novel builds up to moments of glaring realism that contrast Humbert's lofty art to the imperfections of life. What I feel to be the highest point of the novel was in Humbert's visit to Dolly Schiller's home, as he finds her pregnant, bespectacled, and smoking a cigarette.

"I covered my face with my hand and broke into the hottest tears I had ever shed. I felt them winding through my fingers and down my chin, and burning me, and my nose got clogged, and I could not stop, and then she touched my wrist.
"I'll die if you touch me," I said. "You are sure you are not coming with me? Is there no hope of your coming? Tell me only this."
"No," she said. "No, honey, no."
She had never called me honey before." (279)

Humbert, who observes and belittles others' actions throughout the novel, finally describes his own state directly with no poetic frill, but with a heartbreaking frankness. When he begins speaking he is for the first time ineloquent, and repeats himself foolishly, and clings hopelessly to an unexceptional word. Had this passage been in any other novel it would have been bland and unremarkable. In Lolita, amidst the sentences polished to literary perfection, this scene is a weakness in the poetry that reflects the weakness that makes Humbert and all other poets human.

Humbert's character development is astounding in the novel. Any reader would understand immediately that the man telling the story is a bad man. He must have been one of the most horrid characters I had read. Yet everything he says is utterly convincing. Nabokov forces the reader to follow Humbert's psychological journey all the way up till the end where he finally repents what he had done to Lolita. This scene is not a simple repenting scene; Humbert realizes what he has done - "She groped for words. I supplied them mentally ('He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.')" (279) - and genuinely laments a loss and his inability to make amends for it. "Drunk on the impossible past" (282), Humbert does not repent his own sins, he repents time gone by, he repents lost art.

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Summary: Too Wordy? Watch the 1962 Film _Lolita_
Review: Nabokov's style in Lolita is darkly comedic and subtly expressive, but he is carried off with redundancy as the novel moves forward. I was shouting I Get It! by the time I reached the middle. However, the redundancy is eliminated in Stanley Kubrick's film _Lolita_, for which Nabokov wrote the screenplay. The events are similar, but more importantly, the characters are just as rich and dangerous. The film is a slim version of the beefy, ego-indulged original novel.

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Summary: Sick Perversion and/or Tragic but Great Literature
Review: It always takes a foreigner to see a place clearly. A native cannot properly view the scenery without prejudice. This book is about a man who falls in love with a pre-adolescent and makes love to her and, in a sense, ruins her. But it is also about America. It¡¯s about problems. It is about seeing things for what they are.

Who is the hero of this book?

Some people who I lent this book to think that it¡¯s disgusting dysfunctional smut, that the author must have experienced it to write about. Regarding the second point, we cannot know for sure whether this is true or not, but given Nabokov¡¯s incredible talent I assume it¡¯s just imagination, for which there is no limit. Take a look at any sentence in the book and you'll see he was an abundance of imagination, wit, and lyricism.

Why this book is fantastic:

You know he¡¯s a child-molester (I hate giving a character from such a wildly distinctive book such a sterile categorical name) yet there you are rooting for him and against everyone else.

The narrator, this infamous, Humbert Humbert is an attractive European out-of-towner. He meets Dolores (Lolita) and falls madly in love with her and his conception of her while staying at her mother¡¯s house as a guest. Meanwhile Lo¡¯s mother falls in love with him. He accepts her offer to marry her and stay in the house because he may be close to Lolita. This is where the story begins, how will he get and then keep Lolita, but I feel that this story hardly matters. It is the creepy and fascinating depth of love, despair and disgust that is so wonderful. The narrator is lovable. His view of America is the best I have ever read. So on one hand he is a maniac and on the other he is a genius, a man who sees my hometown clearer than I do. What do we make of such a character? If he is better than me in certain ways, what am I?

Read it for yourself and decide what you think of him and then ask the question you¡¯re always asking yourself as your read: So what am I? If I was a character in fiction what secret lusts, passions, and desires would a talented author unearth about me?

This is one of the best books of the century.

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Summary: Astonishing literature
Review: John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. writes in a foreword that Humbert Humbert, author of the following manuscript, titled "Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male," died in jail just before his trial was to start in 1952.

Humbert narrates hereafter. He details his European childhood and background as a scholar and relates his tragic childhood love for Annabel Leigh, whose death traumatized Humbert. Humbert is now obsessively attracted to "nymphets," young girls who possess a mysterious seductive power.

After shuttling around some mental institutions and doing odd writing jobs, Humbert lands in the New England town of Ramsdale. He takes a room at the house of widower Charlotte Haze because her beautiful young daughter, Lolita, reminds him of Annabel. Humbert lusts after and flirts with Lolita, but is afraid to do anything lest the repulsive Haze, who wants Humbert, discover her lodger's pedophilia. Lolita goes off to summer camp, and Humbert reluctantly marries Haze, since it is his only chance to keep Lolita in his life.

Humbert toys with the idea of killing Haze, but is unable to do it. She discovers his diary, filled with entries about his love for Lolita and hatred for her, and tells him she is leaving. However, she is immediately hit by a car, and Humbert picks Lolita up at camp. He eventually breaks the news about her mother's death, and at a hotel called The Enchanted Hunter, they have sex for the first time. A strange man seems to take a keen interest in them.

Humbert and Lolita drive across the U.S. for one year. Humbert threatens to put Lolita in an orphanage if she does not comply with his sexual demands. Humbert gets a job at Beardsley College and enrolls Lolita in the girls' school there. Lolita's desire to socialize with boys strains her relationship with Humbert, and he finally agrees to let her participate in a school play called "The Enchanted Hunters."

Humbert suspects Lolita of infidelity, and they leave for another road trip. A man who resembles a relative of Humbert's named Trapp seems to be following them, and Lolita appears to be in contact with him. When Lolita gets sick and is placed in a doctor's office, she is taken away by the man who resembles Trapp. Humbert tries to find her for the next two years, but to no avail. He takes up with a woman named Rita for two years until he receives a letter from Lolita, now married, pregnant, and asking for money.

Humbert plans to kill Lolita's husband, but when he visits them, finds out that her kidnaper was actually Clare Quilty, a playwright with whom Lolita was in love. When she refused to participate in his child pornography films, he rejected her. Lolita declines Humbert's invitation to live with him, and he leaves heartbroken.
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Summary: Belletristic to the core
Review: I feel this review serves to make some minor correction to reviews that do not serve Nabokov's zenith justice. I have often heard some refer to Lolita (la-lee-ta) not low-lee-ta as a love story when its nothing of the sort. Forsooth, Humbert humbert was in love with little Dolores Haze, but that does not circumscribe this story to the banalities of the love story. It is about passion, albeit an iniquitous one at that. After re-reading it and studying nabokovs abhorrent distaste for anything beyond the crested demarcation of the belletristic, its safe to say its not an allegory but a tale of passion to the tenth degree in a five point shield. Nabokov defeats the overrated execrable, histrionic, right-wing bedlam mentality of Fyodor Dostoevsky by an enormous margin. He indeed matched and beat Raskolnikov with the affinity efficaciousness of Humbert Humbert. He is an émigré spiritually lost since the death of Annabel lee in childhood due to typhus in Corfu. No critic can doubt little La-lee-ta was a proxy for the long gone Annabel. Humbert strolls the streets of France in search of nymphs (side note nymph means wife in Greek). He has an affair with the "18 year" old prevarication Monique, who he says he was risking the chance of a venereal disease just to be with a nymphet. Indeed after awhile she grew to seem to mature and he cast her away to remember her as she was. Not every child can be a nymph, in France he goes to a modeling agency, (escort) where the mistress shows him a book of adult women, as we all know his concupiscence is with the innocence and puerile Nymphets. After a lot of subliminal hints she knows what he wants, and arranges for him to get it. As we see he has no interest in the unattractive 15 year old that the mother is trying to pawn off. He rejects her, and the mother goes and tries to demonstrate how great the merchandise is. When he rejects it again and tries to leave she screams and two men and a child come in, Humbert being your typical passive as most pedophiles are, pays, also the one of the men claimed to have worked for the police take it as you will. While a lodger he stays with Charlotte Haze due to the fact that the companion he was suppose to stay with house had burned down, Humbert is indeed a tad egocentric and wasn't to concerned with the mans throes but his own contretemps. While with Charlotte he develops a sympathy for young dolly. One morning Charlotte leaves him a note telling him to leave because she is in love with him and too embarrassed to speak with veracity. He buckles down to do it (sacrifice) all to be with his Lolita. He planned to kill charlotte before serendipity hit (pun intended) and she was struck by a car after finding out humberts secret desire for her daughter (whom she detested). From then he doesn't tell Lolita about her mothers death for about a month as they travel across the usa. She seduces him first by the act of fellatio but to her it was nothing more than a childs game. "Ladies and gentleman of the jury... I WAS NOT EVEN HER FIRST Lover" Lolita eventually grows bored with humbert as she is nothing more than a speck in her past, she runs of with quality another pedophile who wrote a play for her school. He has a relationship with a woman (rosa or something I cant remember, shes a minor player). Until eventually she sends him a letter, which when broken down is nothing more than a request for a cheque. He travels up and surprises her which she knew he would do and finds her a barefoot housewife. Married to dick they are poor and she has kids, and heres the point HE STILL LOVED HER, which is definitely passion, love is tiresome, passion is where life is. I have omitted my paragraph about clare quilty don't want to be a spoiler. Indeed this is the greatest book of the 20th century, as I've proven in various disputes with fans of the sacrosanct elitist predilection of finnegans wake, which is utter rubbish to a true author. Read Lolita put it down and go back to it 180 days later and re read, my promise to you, it wont be a dissappointment

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Summary: Just Enjoy This Masterpiece
Review: Nabokov's greatest, best-known novel is great because it doesn't push any social or moral message on the reader - Nabokov just expects you to examine this particular creative construct of reality with the prejudices one may expect the book to instill. And this is why although, considering the book's rather repellent subject matter could make it cheap and lurid, it's not so - it's much more than a cheap shocker about nympholepsy.

It is, of course, a primarily aesthetic story. Don't read Nabokov looking for a quick plot (although you may get drawn into that trap, like I did), because you'll miss so much if you do so that it renders it useless to read him in the first place. In reading "Lolita", one may be captured by the humor, by the hints of tawdriness, by the fact that this seems to be nothing more than literary smut - and miss all the clues hinting at the ending, all the colorful characters, plot nuances, and aesthetic joy, that make reading it carefully such a pleasure. Other novels I encourage you to read are: Pale Fire by Nabakov, The Losers' Club by Richard Perez