Won't make a new thread for this, but I'm currently thinking of buying both Lolita and Pnin. So, help me on my way!
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Won't make a new thread for this, but I'm currently thinking of buying both Lolita and Pnin. So, help me on my way!
I really like Lolita and am always awestruck by the way Nabakov writes. He is a master wordsmith and a smile surely remains on your face throughout the entire experience of reading his works. One thing about Lolita in particular though, while written in breathtakingly wonderful prose, it lacks the substance of truly great novels. Humbert Humbert is not a character from whom you can take something with you. I would compare this novel to the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Her stunning beauty will surely take your breath away, but alas, beauty alone does not a great woman make.
Adam
I think it's very good, but what are your thoughts?
One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Nabokov creates a tragic comedy, fused by an absolutely brilliant narrator, to poke fun at the very foundations and biases that we have created about society. Personally, I feel Nabokov, through his narrator is laughing at us, saying "You sick perverts, you fell into the trap of my narrator, and I should you how sick and twisted your perverse lives are."
I reckon that the two are both victims, although they clash. Vivian Darkbloom, Clare Quilty's assistant, is the anagram of Vladimir Nabokov.
I think that this is one of the worst (which is to say easiest) ways to misread Lolita. If you read Nabokov's afterword to Lolita, then you would find out that the 'first gleams' of Lolita lay in a story which Nabokov read in a newspaper, in which a monkey which was trained to draw, drew the bars on it's cage. I think that Nabokov's example encapsulates Lolita's situation throughout her tenure with Humbert. Humbert is a very intelligent, articulate, erudite and sometimes funny narrator ('frigid gentlewomen of the jury!, 'I have noticed a drop in Lolita's morals' etc.), yet, for all his erudition, he is essentially a narcissist-he is completely disinterested in the lives and opinions of other people, he has little or no empathy and, until the end of the novel, little or no regret over his rape and abduction of a young girl. A lot of people forget that Lolita is a young girl; she is forced to grow up quickly and yet too few people recognise this as they are held under the spell woven by a witty and intelligent narcissist. He doesn’t allow Lolita to grow up, or to be herself, simply because he wants her to remain the same forever, he wants Lolita to remain a slave to his will, an echo of his insensitivity.Quote:
I actually see Lolita as more predatory than Humbert Humbert. She used Humbert more than he used her, in my opinion. Of course, he's usually seen as the "user" and she the "victim" in part because he was the adult and she the child.
Another important passage in the novel which illustrates this the passage when Lolita repels Humbert's advances following his revelation that her mother has died-she goes back to Humbert because she had nowhere else to go. Nabokov notes that in Kafka's The Metamorphoses Gregor's family are insects masquerading as human beings-the same could be said of Humbert Humbert.
i read it when i was your age and was fine. things aren't step-by-step graphically explained but the horror comes out of what is implied and a few shocking sentences, because of the thoughts behind them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bysshe
the librarian didn't give me funny looks but my english teacher looked suitably shocked. he kept going on about how horrible it was because the paedophile was the narrator but i don't think he properly appreciated it. because it's a book you'd naturally make assumptions about, i suggest you read it twice.
which film of lolita do you think was truer to the book/better?
I agree, in part, with the assesment of Humbert as being, in a sense, enslaved to his own desires-he could not help being what he was. But he was a cruel and malicious individual in other ways-notice his treatment of his sily and stupid first wife, his treatment of Lolita's utterly phillistine mother-note the way in which he describes them, as being idiotic creatures who deserved what they got-remember it is Humbert who is narrarating the events, Humbert who is describing the characters, Humbert who is describing the actions of various characters, it is Humbert who traps us into thinking that his wives were idiots, that Lolita was manipulating him, that he was a victim of his own perversity.Quote:
Humbert Humbert is, to me, his own victim. I'm not saying he's Lolita's victim, but his own. Most of us can control our impulses - anger, desire, jealousy - and we don't fall victim to them, but Humbert Humbert did. Lolita didn't fall victim to her impulses or even to Humbert's. She made of her life what she wanted. She did the choosing. She didn't choose wisely, but she did have the luxury of choosing. Of course, her choosing was constrained, but who's isn't? We all have constraints placed on our lives and choices. Humbert didn't have that luxury of choice. Not that he wasn't a predatory character. Of course he was. Of course he tried to control and seduce Lolita. He used her poor unwitting mother, who was much more of a victim than Lolita.
Humbert does not allow Lolita to grow up-he wants her to reflect his ideal image, his Annabel Lee, it is Humbert who drugs and rapes Lolita. Humbert fails to see Lolita outside of his own narrow and arbitary prism of what Lolita should be, he only loves and desires Lolita insofar that she reflects his own personality and tastes. Humbert is a true despot. Lolita's 'freedom' is not too dissimilair to the 'freedom' of citizens who live under a autocratic regime.
You say that Lolita has a degree of choice-but what choice does she have? Both of her parents are dead and she is kidnapped by a perverted lunatic and taken on a long road trip, followed by a stint at a place where she knows nobody-Humbert withdraws her from the place as soon as she begins to show the slightest semblance of recalcitrance, of independence, of wanting to be a 'normal' teenager. She could have gone to somebody for help, but she was just a young girl, and I as I mentioned before, a lot of people tend to forget that and think that she is a lot older simply because she was raped by an older man. As Lolita's mother notes, deep down she is just a 'normal girl' however bourgeoisie that may sound to Humbert's tendentious ears.
People also tend to forget how Lolita was often treated like an unwanted child by her 'victim' mother (Or as Humbert may describe her; car crash, dead.)
For what it is worth, Nabokov collaborated and helped write the Kubrick version, and thought it was a masterpiece, or something along those lines, and this coming from someone who rarely watched movies! I guess Kubrick's film would be less 'steamy' or sexually explicit because of film censorship of the time, but that is not what Lolita is about. Plus Kubrick is one of the greatest directors of all time, and the film boasts a great cast. (Peter Sellers, James Mason.) I have not seen the newer version with Jeremy Irons in it.Quote:
which film of lolita do you think was truer to the book/better?
In response to Inderjit Sanghe, I also agree- HH is a manipulator, he admits that
himself. Apart from Lolita, he describes the rest of the characters as being silly and open to manipulation but ironically he is manipulated by a child. Lolita's mother really is selfish. I think HH and Lolita, for all their clashes, are very alike- both are lonely and both are clever.
At the end, when she is older, I think that he is really and truly in love with her at that point- she is no longer like a 'nymphet' but he finally realises.
Nabokov almost collaborated on the screenplay. Kubrick hired him, and he wrote a screenplay, but that wasn't what was used. If you look around, you should be able to find a copy of his screenplay with notes. There was one scene in the movie that had some relationship with Nabokov's screenplay, but I con't remember which one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Inderjit Sanghe
i have not read lolita yet (i plan to) but ive recently been through anne rice's belinda and i enjoyed large parts of that very much...