Is Lolita Porn?

Maybe I won't read it, I don't know. Not because it isn't porn, lol. Just because there is so much to read, this just doesn't sound that enticing.

'Lolita' is an alright read. It's certainly not pornographic though. But that's from the viewpoint of a 20th century teenager. I guess a reader from the time in when 'Lolita' was first published would see the book in a much more controversial light.

But to me, I just saw it as an alright read. It's very well written, Nabokov was a master linguist, and it's hard not to appreciate this, however it just didn't grip me all that much. Perhaps I could appreciate it more on a re-read one day.

Caspa, I agree.
Though beautiful, it wasn't enough to make me really enjoy it.
After i read the line about her insides hurting i felt rather quesy and more disgusted with Humbert than before. Sounds pretty childish i know.

We talk about the 50's as if they really had that different perception of pornography than us. Heck, they had Henry Miller and Batailie already. Anyone should read Story of Eye to see anything that is really "pornographic"... They had about 200 years of Sade. Even if it was an age of big conservatorism, there is more reasons behind the attack against Lolita.
The thing is much of the hatred the book caused is Nabokov's fault. He is soo good using the unreliable narrator that most normal readers (Not the kind of reader that Nabokov writes too, Lolita fame attracted more than one butterfly to his net) were at first hooked by HH. He is charming (after all he is an intellectual with Style while writing) after all. So, many people understood the book as a defense of pedophilie because they are hooked by HH. That is what gave the book his "eek, dirty book" status more than anything else.
One with a different level of reading, able to bypass the most direct interpretation would get the irony (Just Nabokov irony is hard, too intellectual the guy is one of those writers for writers) of the book. Feeling disgusted by the book or HH is a great thing. He is meant to be the villain of the book and not the hero.
One of the things that made me admire Lolita and Nabokov more is when he wrote it. He did it after Joyce and Borges seemed to push up a higher standart on the Novels (Borges is more the epitaph of romances with Pierre Menard) that the will of Nabokov (and the few others who kept writing good romances) to pull with such great book, when he knew Finnegans Wake or Ulysses are around is amazing. But that is just my ranting...