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Summary: The "Lack of Morals" or maybe Sublime Love?
Review: Never in my books-fiend shallow life I came across any genuine prove for the life reality that is claimed to be depicted in novels. It happened only once, once and forever. The day I read "Lolita". One may argue, foam-like mouth, about low morals, about criminal vulgarity and the like, but the only thing is that stays always the same - the presence of love, the real, sublime feeling that had never been available to all the masterpiece created earlier. "It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight." Ladies and gentlemen, would you ever be able to add anything else?
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Summary: Annotated version helps a lot
Review: It is actually possible to read the story and make sense out of it without reference to any of the annotations, but almost any reader will be keenly aware of having missed a lot in the process. That is, you don't really miss any of the story without the annotations, but much of what makes Lolita famous is what's going on between the lines, and, unless you speak both English and French and have an encyclopedic knowledge of literature in both languages, you probably won't get more than 10% of this "extra" material without a good set of annotations.As the name implies, "The Annotated Lolita" is superbly annotated, translating foreign phrases, explaining literary references, and pointing out connections between characters in different parts of the story. Unfortunately, this has the effect of sacrificing some of the surprise in the surface story, not to mention giving you neck pain from constantly flipping back and forth while you read. But if you don't mind taking the time, you can get the best of both worlds from this edition. You begin by reading the text of the novel straight through one time without reference to either the introduction or the annotations. Having done that, you next read the introduction (which is excellent in its own right, but which really does depend on you already having read the story) and finally, skim the text again, checking out each annotation as you go. It will take more time, but you'll get to enjoy the surface story without distractions and you'll have the pleasure of watching all the mysteries clear up on the second pass.
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Summary: Minor details highlighted
Review: The reader would do well to get the annotated "Lolita" which adds so much to Nabokov's work and enhances one's perspective on the novel. One example of many--the name "Vivian Darkbloom," who is Claire Quilty's playwrighting partner--is an anagram of "Vladimir Nabokov." Buy this book!
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Summary: good read
Review: unlike most other great novels, this one is pretty damn readable, without pandering or compromising any of the material. Nabokov did the unthinkable back then, (wich is all the rage now nearly half a century later) he dared to see both sides of American culture the high brow and the low, and stuck them both into his blender,and the results are what you would call today post-modernism.It can be read either as a trash novel, a romance, a tragedy, a comedy, a fairy tale, and so forth and so forth. This novel is pushes american prose into directions that at are a6t once sublime and invigorating. I would recommend giving this book to those ( particularly teens) who are unimpressed by literature. Nabokov's style is so clean and accesible, as well as infinitely fresh, that I would assume it would ignite a more deeper respect towards the written word by today's youth.
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Summary: Why to buy the annotated version
Review: I recommend you buy the annotated version of this text because without the notes it is impossible to catch all of the word-play Nabokov uses in this book. The annotated version will give you a richer experience with the novel, well worth the extra cash. Few, if any, readers are skilled enough to catch all of Nabokov's allusions. In Lolita, there are over sixty allusions to E.A. Poe alone! Even if you are good enough to get all the allusions, anagrams, and other word games, did you catch all of the Lepidoptera imagery/metaphor?...What's Lepidoptera?...It's the word that's making you think, "Hmm, those notes might not be a bad idea."
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Summary: About the book's editor Appel
Review: Nabokov's story does not need my recommendation. Only the most incorrigibly Pharisiac or dull would not find it enormously enjoyable. Delightful puns and oblique references tantalize the alert reader all the way. My faith in the editor's knowledge took a setback, however, when I read his misguided and misinformed defence of Nabokov's pun "beaver eater". The Beefeaters are guards of the Tower of London and they don't wear skin hats. Appel probably confused them with the Grenadier Guards and the Cold Stream Guards, whose uniform hats are bear skins, not beaver, in any case. I wonder where else has Appel misled us.
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Summary: One of the most beautiful and honest books I've ever read!
Review: Although the story of Lolita is about a somewhat perverse character and his obsession with a 'nymphet', Nabokov manages to give us a glimpse of the individual behind the perversion, a man who has feelings, desires and preferences, just like the rest of us. Lolita is a beautiful book and by the end it is possible to see beyond all the criticisms levelled at the books' subject matter and focus upon the fact that the main character is a personality unto himself and that his 'perverse' desire for Lolita would be called nothing other than love in a more tolerant and liberated society. It is possible, afterall, for young girls to fall in love and to feel ready to be sexually active, even at a young age. The character of Lolita is by no means the innocent some proffess her to be. A wonderful insight into the mind of a jaded individual, who is, nevertheless, a human being after all.
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Summary: A flirtation with language, perversity and montrosity
Review: Lolita changed my view of humanity
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Summary: Amazing work, but without notes a tough road indeed
Review: Fabulously funny, yet terrible in insights into tortured, haunted soul. Erotic at times, then a tough grind with many rewards, most of which are unattainable without Appel's stunning notes. He was Nabokov's one-time student and eternal disciple. If at all possible see the Jeremy Irons film first to help navigate the obscure portions (not the Kubrik/Nabokov 1961 looser. How did N. ever get himself enmeshed in that miserable version (Sue Lyon horribly miscast)which falls so far short of the book? No doubt a child of the 50's, definitely not the 60's)The Irons (1997) is far more faithful to Nabokov and a hell of a better movie.
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Summary: More CAN be less.
Review: My last review wasn't accepted, perhaps because it was a little critical of Dr. Appel. I only meant to say that, though his exhaustive research and elucidation are essential to fully grasping the astonishing depth, facility and variety of this masterpiece, by laying bare the Nabokov method so baldly, Appel makes the reader lose some of the magic and mystery of his art. Lolita is an extraordinary book, very difficult to read, not just because, at best, it contains the perverted ravings of an incarcerated homicidal maniac (if we accept that Humbert is making most of it up), but also because it shows so little faith in fiction as a form which can encourage meaningful change, even if it's just in perception. 'I have only words to play with' says Humbert, and he does beautiful, bewitching, awe-inspiring things with them, but he is locked in solipsistic paralysis - he has written his memoirs AFTER his so-called epiphany at the end of the novel, which somewhat undermines the 'benevolent pantheism' Appel finds in the novel. However, even if we despair, we can read one of the most horrifyingly funny novels this century; a series of extraordinary set-pieces (Quilty following Hum and Lo in an enchanted zone being my favorite); a vindication of storytelling, even as it is being subverted; endlessly inventive, dizzying, lyrical language; and a gorgeously sensitive moral monster unmatched until Freddie Montgomery in The Book Of Evidence.
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