A different Point of View

[PeterL]

PeterL I think it's an excellent idea if you're able to pull it off. But I think you ought to allow her her death at 17 because it's such an important part of her tragedy. Indeed it's what makes it a tragedy, both in the Shakespearean sense of all the main characters dying in the end, as well as the fact that she never had a chance to get her life back after what Humbert did to her.

I see no need for her to have died at 17 years of age. One of the more ineresting things about Lolita is that it is Humbert's words, as if it was told to Nabokov who then put it together. We readers don't get anything else, and there are goo reasons for believing that lage parts of Humbert's narrative is composed of lies. There is nothing between the covers of that book that can be accepted, including the Introduction and the author's Afterword.

The Introduction is perhaps more fictional than the rest, because it purports to be the truth about what happened in the end to the characters. As a carefully xynical reader, I see no reason to accept any of it. There is no reason for Humbert to have been arrested, unless Dolores accused him, so there was no reason for him to have been in jail. With that thrown out, there is no reason to think that he died in jail, because he wasn't there. Have you read The Great Impostiror seen the movie? The character did exist, but he disappeared shortly after being interviewed. The author investigated the claims and included those that could be backed up. I regard Humbert as a similar sort of characterBut while he done criminal acts, there was no way to connect him without Dolores' testimony.

I'm not going to write the whole thing here, but I think that you should get the idea.

[Summer M]

I'd like to see Catch-22 through the eyes of Milo Minderbinder. But then, I've just had six shots of Scotch, so things may seem different tomorrow.

[mona amon]

I see no need for her to have died at 17 years of age. One of the more ineresting things about Lolita is that it is Humbert's words, as if it was told to Nabokov who then put it together. We readers don't get anything else, and there are goo reasons for believing that lage parts of Humbert's narrative is composed of lies. There is nothing between the covers of that book that can be accepted, including the Introduction and the author's Afterword.

The Introduction is perhaps more fictional than the rest, because it purports to be the truth about what happened in the end to the characters. As a carefully xynical reader, I see no reason to accept any of it. There is no reason for Humbert to have been arrested, unless Dolores accused him, so there was no reason for him to have been in jail. With that thrown out, there is no reason to think that he died in jail, because he wasn't there. Have you read The Great Impostiror seen the movie? The character did exist, but he disappeared shortly after being interviewed. The author investigated the claims and included those that could be backed up. I regard Humbert as a similar sort of characterBut while he done criminal acts, there was no way to connect him without Dolores' testimony.

I'm not going to write the whole thing here, but I think that you should get the idea.

I've not read/seen the Great Imposter but I think I know what you mean - something like American Psycho or the Black Swan where you have no idea whether what you see really happened, or only happened in the protagonists' minds.

**SPOILERS**for Lolita ahead -

(Axtually, this thread already contains a spoiler. I thought Dolores death was mentioned in the foreword itself, and so it is, but under the name of Mrs Richard F Schiller.)

The foreword of Lolita is clearly written by some character other than HH, and the afterword by Nabokov in his own voice, Just as the poem in Pale Fire was written by John Shade. Of course you can doubt every single thing, but that's the easy way out. It's more fun to try and figure out which parts are true, and which are not, isn't it?

Humbert is in jail not because of his abduction of Dolores, which, as you say, no one knew about, but because of his murder of Quilty.

[kelby_lake]

There are a few books that are from Lolita's POV. I think two of them are written in a diary-style format and Steve Martin published a story on Lolita's life at 50.

Personally, though I think it would be interesting, the novel would lose some of its magic by explaining what really happened. It is not Dolores Haze that interests us but Lolita, Humbert's version of her.

Has anyone seen the two films of Lolita (the Kubrick one and one by Adrian Lyne)? What do you think?

[Emil Miller]

Has anyone seen the two films of Lolita (the Kubrick one and one by Adrian Lyne)? What do you think?

I have seen both and, although the Adrian Lyne version is closer to the period, I think the Kubrick version is better directed and acted. As I've mentioned before on this subject, Lyne's Lolita is more childlike and from that standpoint more convincing, but the precociousness's of Kubrick's is better portrayed even though Sue Lyon is too knowing for the part. I suppose that, given that Kubrick was obliged to upgrade her age to 15, it was inevitable that would happen.
The time gap between the two versions enabled Lyne to portray Lolita as being closer to that of the girl's age in the book but overall it still doesn't come off.

[kelby_lake]

The Kubrick Lolita is a bit long and I'm not too sure about Peter Sellers. However I think the Lyne version misses out the comedy.

[Emil Miller]

The Kubrick Lolita is a bit long and I'm not too sure about Peter Sellers. However I think the Lyne version misses out the comedy.

I agree that Peter Sellers multi-roles are questionable and the film is on the long side but then again so is the book which could, in my view, have had some of the repetitive travelling sequences removed.
I don't recall any comedy in the Lyne film but I'm not sure whether its omission is a good thing or not.
Whether Kubrick would have made a better job of it had he been allowed to film it in the USA is another question that arises in respect of the film but I think that he did remarkably well given the circumstances.

[PeterL]

There are a few books that are from Lolita's POV. I think two of them are written in a diary-style format and Steve Martin published a story on Lolita's life at 50.

I'll have to look for them.

Personally, though I think it would be interesting, the novel would lose some of its magic by explaining what really happened. It is not Dolores Haze that interests us but Lolita, Humbert's version of her.

I started wondering about it while I was reading Lolita. Humbert qwas clearly not reliable, so what was really happening.

I've not read/seen the Great Imposter but I think I know what you mean - something like American Psycho or the Black Swan where you have no idea whether what you see really happened, or only happened in the protagonists' minds.

It's more detailed than that.The actual sstory is very interesting, bt not all of the details ever came otu, because the whole story was never told by Demara. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Impostor

**SPOILERS**for Lolita ahead -

(Axtually, this thread already contains a spoiler. I thought Dolores death was mentioned in the foreword itself, and so it is, but under the name of Mrs Richard F Schiller.)

The foreword of Lolita is clearly written by some character other than HH, and the afterword by Nabokov in his own voice, Just as the poem in Pale Fire was written by John Shade. Of course you can doubt every single thing, but that's the easy way out. It's more fun to try and figure out which parts are true, and which are not, isn't it?

Humbert is in jail not because of his abduction of Dolores, which, as you say, no one knew about, but because of his murder of Quilty.

The foreword is as reliable as the bulk of Pale Fire, not at all. After reading the book and reconsidering the foreword, I am confident that it is unclear who wrote the foreword (exceot that Nabokov did). It almost certainly had to have been written by Humbert, because no one else knew enough, and there was no murder of Quilty, because Quilty was a figment of Humbert's imagination.

The more I think about it, the more my book idea makes sense.