Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
NUMBER: 77
Genre: Fiction; Origin: USA; Pages: 500
Satisfaction rating: 10.0
OVERVIEW:
Lolita chronicles the life of its narrator and protagonist, Humbert Humbert. This is his confession from from the confines of a jail cell, the disastrous seduction of the twelve year old Dolores Haze. This dark, comic novel paints a complex portrait of obsession that reveals Humbert to be both a middle-aged monster and a wild romantic who fails to attain his ideal.
MATTHEW’S COMMENTS:
Of course the reputation of this book was well known to me before reading a word, but all preconceptions were way off the mark. While I expected a sexually explicit exploration of obsession and even
an analysis of the troublesome ethical dilemma of where love borders assault. I did not expect to laugh! With each subversive smile Nabokov twists the moral thorn in the reader’s side, and it is this that makes the book as confronting in 2008 as it was in 1955. Lets not forget the magnitude of the social climate in 1950s America, McCarthyism, sanitised family entertainment of The Ed Sullivan Show, etc.
I was reading Lolita’s entry in the Peter Boxall edited tome 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and I think the effect of the novel is best summed up by Boxall himself. ‘Written in Nabokov’s characteristic immaculate style, this violent and brutal novel poses fascinating questions about the role of fiction. Is it possible for us to find beauty, pleasure and comedy in a narrative that is ethically repugnant? Can we suspend moral judgment in favour of aesthetic appreciation of a finely tuned sentence or a perfectly balanced phrase?’
It is this last point that Nabokov himself seems to champion in defence of the book. His motivation for righting Lolita is for his passion for his adopted English language. It is his use of prose that allows draws the reader into the world of Humbert while never straying into erotica, more importantly it is never cliched.
For those looking to pick up a copy, make sure it is one with Nabokov’s commentary in the back. His thoughts on the novel’s genesis are great. I particularly like his comments on the difficulty of getting the book published, for instance, ‘they refusal to buy the book was based not on my treatment of the theme but on the theme itself, for there are at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned. The two others are: a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106.
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