Book #39
“I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew that she would not be forever Lolita.” — Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
I don’t know if I’ve read any book in the past two years that tested me the way Lolita did. I’ve put off reading Lolita for years, because I couldn’t deal with the subject matter. Last year, I picked it up in a bookstore and read the first page and Nabokov’s style mesmerized me. It was another couple of months until I bought it, and another month still before I started reading. I have finished quite a number of books while continuing Lolita, mainly because I couldn’t read more than a few pages at a time. I also didn’t want to put it down and lose Nabokov’s incredible words.
“Teachers of Literature are apt to think up such problems as “What is the author’s purpose?” or still worse “What is the guy trying to say?” Now, I happen to be the kind of author who in starting to work on a book has no other purpose than to get rid of that book and who, when asked to explain its origin and growth, has to rely on such ancient terms as Interreaction of Inspiration and Combination — which, I admit, sounds like a conjurer explaining one trick by performing another.” — Vladimir Nabokov
I found the little afterword by Nabokov very enlightening. It’s a welcome look into the writer’s mind. Everyone knows what Lolita is about. I don’t have to summarize it. What I’m trying to grapple with are my thoughts on the book and how it made me feel.
I’m sure everyone is disturbed by pedophiles. But the idea especially disturbed me, from a young age. Think about it — how many children of 12 or 13 watch movies nowadays and fantasize or admire men in their late 30’s or 40’s? I remember the jolt I got when I realized that Brad Pitt was my mother’s age. I was about fifteen, I think. When viewed in respect to things like this Lolita is even more frightening. That’s where Nabokov came from, as well. Humbert describes himself as a handsome man bearing a striking resemblance to an actor Dolores (Lolita) admires.
“I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray’s assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connectd with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammar and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann.” — Vladimir Nabokov
On some level, that’s one of the things that makes Lolita such a jarring novel — you read it, and you cannot find a moral string to tie everything up neatly. And it is definitely, definitely true that reading Lolita is succumbing to aesthetic bliss.
“After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution of “english language” for “romantic novel” would make this elegant formula more correct.” — Vladimir Nabokov
I would not have read this novel had it not been for Nabokov’s irresistible mastery of the English language. You may dispute this, but in my mind I don’t know if I have ever read a writer more talented, or one whose style is so exquisite. There are many, many instances when I just sat, open-mouthed, at his ability. I think it a strange thing for one to say they loved
Lolita, but I did. It’s not only that Nabokov is talented, which he very clearly is. It’s that his prose speaks to me. There are other writers whose style I very much love (Orwell, for instance) and who I rank amongst my favourites. But Nabokov is different. It feels like he distilled language, and if you were to look for the essence of the English language, you would find it in his words.
