Lolita

If you're taking CSE1729 I saw you reading this in class you disgusting fat pervert.

Nah I wish I had contributed to your discussion

>>8611723
My favorite part was end when he killed the pornographer

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Yeah, there's no way he wasn't. Like three of his novels are about pedophilia. You don't pop out that much stuff without an honest interest in something.

>I think he really taps into something blissful and perfect with all of the driving through pointless American small towns while escaping the law and enjoyably losing his mind while taking so much time to just think and lie.
Yeah, ı really enjoyed that about the book too,that it wasn't some great quest into the zeitgeist or whatever, but just the story of a pervert and how that seemingly banal story could irreparably change a girl's life. It's a work of love and pleasure, not ambition.

>favourite part
The way he poetically and succintly described them having sex/the aftermath for the first time. So, so good.

Also, ı couldn't help but see Borges in Kubrick's cast choice for HH: the black combed hair, the mediterranean face, the hidden romanticism and ironic gentlemanliness, the half-muted voice, his meekliness, how he can't help but be so intellectual.

Even if he was there's nothing wrong with it.

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>>8611723
I think he was an ephebophile, which is a pretty important distinction. I mean he coined the word nymphet specifically to denote girls in the period pubescence when there is a palpable retention of the features of childhood inmixed the acquisition of sexually definable characteristics and a growing sexual awareness/motivation. I think his fixation on lepidoptery was a bit of sublimation of this desire for this intermediate state, the chrysalis being a particularly potent and dramatic symbol of this transitional state.

>>8612220
Pedophilia is only ok if it's man/boy

>>8611723
>was Nabokov a pedophile?
I mean, people married off their daughters aged around 12-13 many years ago. Still do it in Muslim nations. But I am not so certain if interest in a subject merely means that one feels or belongs to that particular grouping. Although of course, he may have had those thoughts. However, there is a difference between preteen girls and young girl-children.

Allegedly, he did tons of research when writing Lolita, subscribed to girl magazines, learned measurements, behaviors, trends, things they'd be interested in. With that much of a time investment into a particular topic, one might believe he would want to put it to more than one use.
>why is this book so cozy?
To me, its just beautiful. Despite Humbert's attractions repulsive and shocking to most, Nabokov does a brilliant job of getting the reader to root for Humbert, despite his flaw. His love feels genuine and passionate and is expressed so eloquently.

>favorite part
Humbert's closing statement as the book ends. "I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret durable pigments, phrophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita." Makes me teary-eyed.

>>8611723
the mad mind, the crack genius to do it!

Wow, this thread contains some awfully poor readings of Lolita. I guess I shouldn't expect better from /lit/, but seriously?

Nabokov is not a "pedophile" (or hebe- or epheb- or whatever), although I'm sure he would have a more nuanced view than "pedos r evil!!!."

Humbert's driving feeling is plainly not "love" (genuine or otherwise), but obsession.


Nabokov didn't write "three novels about pedophilia"--Lolita is the closest thing, I suppose, although it is plainly about obsession and control/domination, and the particular expression of those ideas in America in contrast to the old world.
Pale Fire isn't "about pedophilia," it is about trolling the establishment, and it contains a very brief allusion to pederasty (which betrays a very mid-20th century view of the equivalence of pederasty to homosexuality, and the association of both with a sort of Freudian arrested development).
And of course Ada is about incest, not pedophilia. Your attraction, as an adult man, to the female characters may be pedophilic, but VV's certainly isn't (neither Van Veen's nor Vladimir Vladimirovich's).

>>8612342
I think he's talking about The Enchanter not Pale Fire. And Ada has "pedophilia" with the prepubescent sister having sexual affairs with her adolescent brother.

>>8612377
You're talking about the younger sister who kills herself I guess, but Van doesn't have sex with her because he's a pedophile, he does because he is in love with Ada.

I think some people read this stuff and just project their own fetishes all over the place. Oedipus didn't think it was hot that he had sex with his mother, even if some readers do, and this is the same kind of thing.

>>8612342
>>8612401
I used to think the same as you, but Ada in conjunction with Invitation to a Beheading brought me over the edge. In ITAB, the girl Emmie is definitely repeatedly sexualized and her relationship to the adult Cincinnatus overly dramatized; she's a premature Lolita, and the strange part is how this whole thing isn't even in the forefront of the story, it just occasionally pops up.

In Ada, you're not understanding that Van and Ada having sex and their attraction to each other when Ada is like 12 and Van 14 is very graphically and lovingly described, there's also Lucette later making out with Van while Ada also does (lucky bastard!)

Unrelated to Lolita, ain't it strange how "ada" means "hell" in Russian, Van's father is named Demon, and it's implied that they're all in a world called "Antiterra", and the alternate world Terra (ours?) is compared to an afterlife --- perhaps an ironic mirror image where the people in the afterlife view THIS world as an afterlife ...also, how Nabokov in this phase of his career, with Lolita, Pnin, and Pale Fire written in that order before it, and then Transparent Things right after (can't speak for Look at the Harlequins! yet) was experimenting with unreliable narrators, or cases where the narrator unexpectedly turns out to be someone/thing entirely different from who/what you thought them to be ... but we're expected to believe Ada, all of a sudden, set, for some reason, in an incomprehensible parallel universe where Russia and the US are merged and there's movies as a common thing in the 1890s and an apparent banning of electricity ... written by Van with supposed comments by Ada about their own life ... we're supposed to take it at face value? this strange science-fiction alternate history thing that is an anomaly in Nabokov's non-genre career, and this supposedly reliable narrator about whom Nabokov actually stated:

>I loathe Van Veen

?

>>8612462
>...also, how Nabokov in this phase of his career, with Lolita, Pnin, and Pale Fire written in that order before it,
>was experimenting with unreliable narrators, or cases where the narrator unexpectedly turns out to be someone/thing entirely different from who/what you thought them to be
>... but we're expected to believe Ada, all of a sudden,
>... written by Van with supposed comments by Ada about their own life
>... we're supposed to take it at face value? this strange science-fiction alternate history thing that is an anomaly in Nabokov's non-genre career, and this supposedly reliable narrator

Well, I think the thing he is generally playing with is the notion of "authorship." Lolita, with its suspiciously self-serving "editor's preface" and Pale Fire, with its onion-layers of nested authorship and probable existence, on at least one of the levels, in the same universe as Pnin, play tricks on the reader and would-be critic by exploiting the space between author and narrator. You can never know whose words you are reading. One of the things that fascinated me so much about Lolita were the stylistic and grammatical errors sprinkled throughout, and alluded to by the "editor" in the preface: which of these mistakes are Humbert's, which are evidence of editorial interference--and could any of them be honest mistakes of the "true author," Nabokov himself?

In Ada, Ada's intrusions introduce the same kind of doubt into the text. The unexpected interference of an extra voice calls into question everything that you had previously read in Van's.

>>8612499
Yeah, but I'm driving at a weirder idea. I haven't even finished Ada yet, but I'll come back on /lit/ when I do. There's a lot of strange things to support the idea that the entire story is fabricated and Van is suffering so much he believes he's in hell and he creates this fantasy story to escape it, but reality intrudes through by these strange coincidences put in by him -- ie ada = hell, his father's named demon, a gratuitous reference to "lucifers" flying around (a reference to the lucifer hummingbird, but possibly...). Also the fact that Van is really pretentious and full of himself and it all seems to be wish-fulfillment --- he's super attractive and self-confident, intelligent and literate, athletic and worldly, etc...I gotta finish it, though, so it's just my preliminary theory, bolstered by the fact that Nabokov loves doing convoluted things with his novels as for instance in Pale Fire.

>>8612520
Well, the whole "mirror world" does beg the question of what the parallel story looks like in "our world."

Probably has something to do with Bolshevism, but I haven't finished it either (I'm reading along with the progress of the annotation project, so it will probably only be another 15 years or so).

>>8612342
>Humbert's driving feeling is plainly not "love" (genuine or otherwise), but obsession.

I think it's important though to say that his obsession was not ultimately with Lolita and the nature of his obsession was not entirely estranged from love. His obsession is the recapturing of a feeling born out of nostalgia for his dead child love that he has internally mythologized to the point of creating the term nymphet and elaborating a whole historical ethos around it.

I think one of the blandest and most tiresome readings the book is turning Lolita into a victim and Humbert into a predator consumed by lust for her. I mean he is a predator but his obsession transcends Lolita on either end. If anything Lolita is slightly inconsequential, and Humbert is both the ultimate victim and villain of the story. Barring her death, Lolita ends her childhood not as some traumatized shamble but as a bland woman preparing to enter into a bland family life seemingly unmolested by the traumas of her youth.

Humbert's murder of her other lover is just as much retribution for the death of his childhood love as for the "loss" of Lolita to him/the developmental process.

>>8612689
>His obsession is the recapturing of a feeling born out of nostalgia for his dead child love
There was never any such feeling. At least, not like he claims to remember.
>that he has internally mythologized to the point of etc.
Ok, I guess you could put it that way, but I think the "precursor" narrative is a little too neat, and doesn't quite fit the story well enough, to be much more than a post-facto explanation concocted by Humbert.

> turning Lolita into a victim and Humbert into a predator consumed by lust for her
Of course Lolita is a victim, but her tragedy isn't epic or classical...it isn't "heroic." She got screwed by one bad turn after another, with no real agency of her own, even when she was characterized as fighting back. Humbert brought tragedy upon himself and couldn't see clearly enough to understand why, or that it was even happening until it was too late.

>If anything Lolita is slightly inconsequential, and Humbert is both the ultimate victim and villain of the story
Yes, definitely.

>a bland woman preparing to enter into a bland family life seemingly unmolested by the traumas of her youth
I didn't see that at all. I saw a sort of white-trash too-young mother, like the sad kinds of families you'd see on a reality show like COPS. Her upbringing was of a different class, but she had descended into a "tragic" life that was no worse than the lives of millions of Americans. So the trauma itself was rendered banal, as the background to a slow and unremarkable tragedy not even worth comment. Meanwhile the infliction of the same trauma was the essence of Humbert's heroic telling of his own version of the story. Many readers seem to think Nabokov made Humbert a sympathetic character, but I think the point is that he is merely the only interesting character. His tragedy was the only one that was avoidable.

>>8611918

>reading Lolita in public
>implying

No. I seriously hope you guys don't do this.

>>8611949

Very satisfying part in an odd way. I think it was the build-up.

>>8612215
>>8612215
>>8612215
>it wasn't some great quest into the zeitgeist or whatever, but just the story of a pervert and how that seemingly banal story could irreparably change a girl's life.

That's a great description of it. The whole book is just a few lives but it's so different.

>>8612302
>To me, its just beautiful. Despite Humbert's attractions repulsive and shocking to most, Nabokov does a brilliant job of getting the reader to root for Humbert, despite his flaw. His love feels genuine and passionate and is expressed so eloquently.

Insightful.

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>>8612761
>No. I seriously hope you guys don't do this.

I do

>>8612689
>unmolested
"He broke my heart. You merely broke my life."

Maybe you all already realize this but I think an important distinction needs to be made. It is not, as some have mentioned in this thread, Nabokov "getting the reader to root for Humbert", it is Humbert Humbert trying (and succeeding) to trick you. The story is written leading up to his trial, it is his last hope for swaying public opinion in his favor (on the first page he addresses the book to "ladies and gentlemen of the jury"). Since facts are under the scrutiny of a judge he can't lie outright, unable to alter the content of his story he focuses on the presentation of that content; his use of language. His prose are at their most purple when he is abusing Lolita (think of the scene on the Davenport) or condemning himself (think of his descriptions of his body as monstrous). In this way he dazzles and distracts the reader from what is really going on. He also gives the character of Lolita the same idealized treatment, while making Charlotte out to be the apathetic mother.

>was Nabokov a pedophile?
This is my least favorite discussion topic surrounding this book, its fruitless and entirely unverifiable. Lets cut down on the conjecture and stick to the books.

>>8612462
I think taking anything in ITAB literally is erroneous. Emmie, along with every other character, is boldly idealized to the point of appearing almost completely fictitious. This is a big part of why I don't like this discussion topic, there are way more compelling implications of Emmie's portrayal in the novel then just evidence of Cornkov being a Pedo.

Also the loving portrayal of young Ada and Lucette is necessary because the book is largely Van's attempt at reclaiming his perfect ideal of the past.

>>8612843
>Since facts are under the scrutiny of a judge he can't lie outright,
The facts don't add up. Take a look here https://miranda.revues.org/2591 for example.

Your readings of the other books in your post seem pretty sound, but I think your interpretation of Lolita is sadly topical. There will never be an ultimate interpretation, but I think there has got to be more to it than that.

>>8612761
>No. I seriously hope you guys don't do this.
I got into a loud debate with a co-worker about whether the subject matter makes the book bad.
for the record he said that the kubrick movie handled it better and he was 'grossed out' by and 'hated' humbert.

>>8612855
Also for the record I work in a warehouse, most of my co workers didnt finish high school

>>8612854
I haven't expressed myself very well here, I agree with you completely that the facts don't add up. One that I found particularly egregious was the timeline of when he supposedly wrote the novel. If you believe the dates he gives, he would have had at most less than two months to write the entire story. Unless HH is some kind of miracle writer, two months is not nearly enough time to plot out the intricate structural motifs of the book. I was simply saying that using language and beauty to evoke emotion is his main tool for capturing the sympathy of his readers.

Also what I wrote is not my full "reading" of Lolita, it appears topical because it was meant in direct response to posts like this >>8612302 one. It is far from ultimate, distrusting Humbert is the beginning of interpretation, not the end.

>>8612342
>I guess I shouldn't expect better from /lit/
You said it yourself: that pretension [which you feel is missing] is purely your own.

>>8612887
>It is far from ultimate, distrusting Humbert is the beginning of interpretation, not the end.
I get the feeling Nabokov made the story like that so people wouldn't really focus on the facts and instead regarded the book as an aesthetic experience. Sure, you can mistrust Humbert, but what's the point? Why not simply enjoy being lied to so beautifully?

>>8612914
The best part is that one experiences the book in both ways. The most damning evidence of HH's deception occurs retrospectively when thinking about the book in it's entirety (such as the timeline issue I brought up before). Therefore the reader enjoys the novels beauty while reading it, and after finishing it is left with a linguistic puzzle. With that said, I began to vaguely distrust Humbert in the first third of the book based on his pompous descriptions of his chess matches, this did not preclude me from enjoying the "aesthetic bliss" that Nabokov strives to conceive.


>what's the point?
In the readers search to understand how they've been misled, they are really disinterring the authors methods and intentions for creating beauty in language.

>>8612342
>Humbert's driving feeling is plainly not "love" (genuine or otherwise), but obsession.
What do you think obsession is rooted in, exactly? In a longing for the consumation of something one can't have but feels is essential... a forbidden love, if you want to be trite. The book really couldn't have been about anything else without losing much of what constitutes it.

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>>8612949
>In the readers search to understand how they've been misled, they are really disinterring the authors methods and intentions for creating beauty in language.

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>tfw read about what happened to Dolores

>le unreliable narrator

is there anything objectively dumber than this

it's like finding out the last line of the book is "...and then he woke up."

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>>8612995

That section made me feel because women have spoken to me in a very similar way

That "Oh Anon/Sweetie/Honey" tone, a mixture of pity and slight affection.

Gets me every time.

>>8613143
think he meant how she died maybe