Nabokov : Lolita
Somewhere near the beginning of "Reading Lolita in Tehran", I realized that I had to read the original if I wanted to join that Iranian book club.
My first attempt, about 45 years ago, was a failure. I was a teenager looking for sex talk and quickly got discouraged by the all that dense verbage that fascinates me now.
What a great book! It's language is so much more delectable than the rather dry traslations of foreign literature that have been my passion for the last 20 years.
Here's a choice passage, from late in the book:
"This book is about Lolita; and now that I have reached the part which ( had I not been forestalled by another internal combustion martyr) might be called "Delores Disparue." there would be little sense in analyzing the three empty years that followed. While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster"
It's typical in many ways -- with it's gratuitous use of French, its wildly romantic self-dramatization, its contrasting voices ("few pertinent points" vs. "side door crashing open") and its innaccuracy: i.e., this book is not about Lolita at all.
Instead, it's all about the narrator who calls himself Humbert Humbert -- a European intellectual who despises all things American (except for the financial legacy that required him to live there) and who has a strong taste for early teenage girls.
Indeed, I'd say this book is all about taste -- especially a taste for language -- and Humbert Humbert is a dedicated aesthete, who, unfortunately has an uncontrollable taste for forbidden fruit.
Though, in many times and places (especially in Asia) that taste for children would have been completely acceptable. As Azar Nafisi reminds us, a ten year old girl can get married in Iran, and as we might recall from "Dream of Red Chamber", supplying young girls to old men was a cottage industry in traditional China.
It's only in places like America that laws protect children -- just one more reason why it's hell-on-earth for a man like Humbert.
Actually, it's that description of America c. 1950 that fills the bulk of this text - and that's what is the most delightful and fascinating for me (who was born then) -- all based upon Nabokov's own extensive travels throughout the country in search of his beloved butterflies.
Though it's limited to the kind of places Nabokov knew: small towns and college campuses.
If only Humbert had fixated upon butterflies instead of underage women, he wouldn't have led such a miserable life!
It's an America seen through the eyes of a profoundly guilty man -- and yes, Humbert does feel guilty - obsessively so -- just not guilty enough to stop what he's doing.
And since both Humbert and his creator were professors of literature, the book is packed with literary references, offering endless opportunities for future scholars to pick its bones.
But at the heart of this story is a character who is so vicious, confused, self decieving, and certifiably insane -- I'm wondering if all that study is worth it.
It's only as an artist that Humbert excells, for which his tale is that kind of evidence that is much more credible than anything else he has to say. (two different versions of his sexual initiation are given in an early chapter to caution the reader concerning the reliability of his narrative)
This is a story that has a flesh-eating monster -- but not a hero to kill it.
And an interesting comparison with Nabokov's fellow Russian-American novelist, Ayn Rand, can be found here:
We know what Ayn Rand thought of Nabokov and Lolita. In a 1964 interview, she cited Mickey Spillane as her favorite writer. When asked about Nabokov, she replied: “I have read only one book of his and a half — the half was Lolita, which I couldn’t finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them” (“Playboy Interview” 40). One cannot but note how closely her condemnation of Nabokov resembles her damnation of Tolstoy. We can imagine what Nabokov might have said about Atlas Shrugged by reading his estimate of What is to be Done? in The Gift. Here he mocks Chernyshevsky’s book for its “helplessly rational structures,” its appeal to “rational egoism,” and concludes that “the idea that calculation is the foundation of every action (or heroic accomplishment) leads to absurdity” (293-94). The ideas attacked by Nabokov lie at the very center of Atlas Shrugged whose author held rationality to be man’s highest virtue.
(BTW -- I can't get beyond the first page of any Ayn Rand novel -- but I do think that novels written from the dark side, just like paintings that exclusively depict Hell, can at most, be considered minor masterpieces)
But even if there's no hero to kill Humbert the Horrible -- at least Humbert is the hero who kills his nemesis, the evil Clare Quilty (Clearly Guilty?) who runs off with Lolita and tries to recruit her for his pornographic films.
Is Cue more evil than Hum ?
They're both intellectuals - though Cue is the kind who tries to be a success in the world -- writing syruppy plays for grade schools as well as X-rated pornography.
I.e. -- he'll do anything for a buck -- while Hum is more self absorbed and romantic about it all -- quite content to make art that will "live in the minds of later generations" (but then -- Hum is a trust fund kid)
O.K. -- Cue is more evil -- and we can't feel too bad about his long, painful death that Hum will eventually give him as he finally, and rather comically, retreats to the shelter of his bed spread.
Except that -- every character in this story is seen through the lens of a notoriously unreliable, self serving narrator -- and neither Cue nor Lo nor any of Humbert's female companions have lives of their own.
The only characters who can be contemplated in this book are the author and his protagonist.
(BTW - I just some clips of the Kubrick film -- and James Mason is almost exactly how I envisioned Humbert -- although I no desire to see it or any other dramatization of this novel)
My first attempt, about 45 years ago, was a failure. I was a teenager looking for sex talk and quickly got discouraged by the all that dense verbage that fascinates me now.
What a great book! It's language is so much more delectable than the rather dry traslations of foreign literature that have been my passion for the last 20 years.
Here's a choice passage, from late in the book:
"This book is about Lolita; and now that I have reached the part which ( had I not been forestalled by another internal combustion martyr) might be called "Delores Disparue." there would be little sense in analyzing the three empty years that followed. While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster"
It's typical in many ways -- with it's gratuitous use of French, its wildly romantic self-dramatization, its contrasting voices ("few pertinent points" vs. "side door crashing open") and its innaccuracy: i.e., this book is not about Lolita at all.
Instead, it's all about the narrator who calls himself Humbert Humbert -- a European intellectual who despises all things American (except for the financial legacy that required him to live there) and who has a strong taste for early teenage girls.
Indeed, I'd say this book is all about taste -- especially a taste for language -- and Humbert Humbert is a dedicated aesthete, who, unfortunately has an uncontrollable taste for forbidden fruit.
Though, in many times and places (especially in Asia) that taste for children would have been completely acceptable. As Azar Nafisi reminds us, a ten year old girl can get married in Iran, and as we might recall from "Dream of Red Chamber", supplying young girls to old men was a cottage industry in traditional China.
It's only in places like America that laws protect children -- just one more reason why it's hell-on-earth for a man like Humbert.
Actually, it's that description of America c. 1950 that fills the bulk of this text - and that's what is the most delightful and fascinating for me (who was born then) -- all based upon Nabokov's own extensive travels throughout the country in search of his beloved butterflies.
Though it's limited to the kind of places Nabokov knew: small towns and college campuses.
If only Humbert had fixated upon butterflies instead of underage women, he wouldn't have led such a miserable life!
It's an America seen through the eyes of a profoundly guilty man -- and yes, Humbert does feel guilty - obsessively so -- just not guilty enough to stop what he's doing.
And since both Humbert and his creator were professors of literature, the book is packed with literary references, offering endless opportunities for future scholars to pick its bones.
But at the heart of this story is a character who is so vicious, confused, self decieving, and certifiably insane -- I'm wondering if all that study is worth it.
It's only as an artist that Humbert excells, for which his tale is that kind of evidence that is much more credible than anything else he has to say. (two different versions of his sexual initiation are given in an early chapter to caution the reader concerning the reliability of his narrative)
This is a story that has a flesh-eating monster -- but not a hero to kill it.
And an interesting comparison with Nabokov's fellow Russian-American novelist, Ayn Rand, can be found here:
We know what Ayn Rand thought of Nabokov and Lolita. In a 1964 interview, she cited Mickey Spillane as her favorite writer. When asked about Nabokov, she replied: “I have read only one book of his and a half — the half was Lolita, which I couldn’t finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them” (“Playboy Interview” 40). One cannot but note how closely her condemnation of Nabokov resembles her damnation of Tolstoy. We can imagine what Nabokov might have said about Atlas Shrugged by reading his estimate of What is to be Done? in The Gift. Here he mocks Chernyshevsky’s book for its “helplessly rational structures,” its appeal to “rational egoism,” and concludes that “the idea that calculation is the foundation of every action (or heroic accomplishment) leads to absurdity” (293-94). The ideas attacked by Nabokov lie at the very center of Atlas Shrugged whose author held rationality to be man’s highest virtue.
(BTW -- I can't get beyond the first page of any Ayn Rand novel -- but I do think that novels written from the dark side, just like paintings that exclusively depict Hell, can at most, be considered minor masterpieces)
But even if there's no hero to kill Humbert the Horrible -- at least Humbert is the hero who kills his nemesis, the evil Clare Quilty (Clearly Guilty?) who runs off with Lolita and tries to recruit her for his pornographic films.
Is Cue more evil than Hum ?
They're both intellectuals - though Cue is the kind who tries to be a success in the world -- writing syruppy plays for grade schools as well as X-rated pornography.
I.e. -- he'll do anything for a buck -- while Hum is more self absorbed and romantic about it all -- quite content to make art that will "live in the minds of later generations" (but then -- Hum is a trust fund kid)
O.K. -- Cue is more evil -- and we can't feel too bad about his long, painful death that Hum will eventually give him as he finally, and rather comically, retreats to the shelter of his bed spread.
Except that -- every character in this story is seen through the lens of a notoriously unreliable, self serving narrator -- and neither Cue nor Lo nor any of Humbert's female companions have lives of their own.
The only characters who can be contemplated in this book are the author and his protagonist.
(BTW - I just some clips of the Kubrick film -- and James Mason is almost exactly how I envisioned Humbert -- although I no desire to see it or any other dramatization of this novel)
posted by chris miller | 5:32 AM
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