So. Lolita. Where do we begin?
As customary practice to starting a blog post I always do a little bit of writing into the post, re-read some of the notes that I made while reading (which this morning includes a long time reflecting on the amount of times I used the term ‘heebie jeebies’) and doing the customary google search. This google search is one of the most important parts of the routine when it has been months between reading (and in this case doing any writing at all). The first link that appears, sandwiched between the panel of book covers you can peruse and purchase at your leisure and the reviews from the New Yorker, GoodReads and other blogs like this one is a link I’ve never seen before. “WARNING: child pornography is illegal: if you see it, report it.”
And this leads me straight into Lolita. I do not endorse this as a love story. I do not endorse this as a young character ‘leading on’ the older male. No, she is not ‘asking for it’. Sometimes I reflect back and have doubts that Dolores Haze is even present for most of the story or if she is simply transformed into ‘Lolita’ and carried around as the fantastic delusion of an unreliable narrator. There are obviously split opinions about this book and a great deal of debate over it’s content. Some are utterly convinced by Humbert Humbert that it is lust and love that is true and Lolita is wicked and bad. Some are utterly convinced that Humbert Humbert is a figure head for a sort of every man so utterly obsessed and consumed by the thing he wishes to possess she ceases to be a human being. I’m not sure where my opinion fully resides.
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
And that is probably because this is the only book I have wished to harm while reading. Beyond my usual dog-earing of page corners and spine breaking (which to me is a tenderness that I leave behind, a sign of my occupation much like leaving a bed unmade, or foot prints on the doorstep) but if only, I could have this novel feeling itself being flung across the room in utter disgust. I had to remind myself that my emotional reaction was the fault of the content and not the book itself, and after all the book itself is innocent.
It was a weird sensation being full of such utter revulsion, yet being so morbidly fascinated by the path the novel takes that I couldn’t bring myself to turn away. It is a book that creeps up on you, where as the reader you almost feel complicit and passive and guilty for witnessing this happening.
But are you witnessing it? Humbert Humbert is such an unreliable narrator that the lines of reality and fantasy are so utterly distorted I am not certain. There is a point near the end of the novel I am uncertain whether or not any of this has happened. Perhaps that is my own rationalisation trying to soothe away the discomfort of the novel. Because the alternative is a man muscling himself into a young girl’s life, becoming her sole guardian and then kidnapping her and road tripping through America. It could be idyllic. It could be boy meets girl, boy and girl run away together.
But instead to me, it is is pure narcissism, justified by supposed flirtation and titillation. It is power play, domination, and possession. And ironically if you want to put a larger lens on it, it is exactly a comment on capitalist America fetishising youth.
So what is it about? I’ve been skirting around the issue. It is about a middle aged pervert and his affair with a 12 year old girl. The novel itself purposes itself to be a manuscript of a man waiting for his trial for murder and the writer crouches behind the name Humbert Humbert as that “expresses the nastiness best”. But it is not the long drawn out whining, but rather his life, from the Hotel postcard mixed european parentage of his youth and his first clumsy encounters at 13 to his later adventures with Lolita.
This early part of the novel is set up as an investigation, perhaps justification for his blighted choices in romance. He suggests that his initial encounter with Annabel is solely to blame for his permanent preference for young girls. He muses that there is something about young girls, between the ages of 9 and 14 that links them to Annabel. From then on Humbert Humbert’s insidious narration is almost comic.
Later on we journey with Humbert Humbert’s feigned attempts at marriage (with adult women whom are by all accounts boring to him) and ultimately to his obsession with his landlady’s daughter, Dolores Haze. It is from there he seduces the mother, and in a freak accident she dies leaving him the sole guardian of Dolores, or Lolita. Throughout the rest of the story he abuses drugs, isolates her, and then go on the run before she slips his grasp.
Lolita is altogether a voiceless character throughout the novel and I do not believe that Humbert Humbert could give an accurate account of the reality of his fantasy if his life depended on it. The Lolita he presents is flirtatious at times emotionally abusive to him, aloof and altogether more complex then an ordinary 12 year old. Which is entirely the point of the novel. This is not a love story. This could be a manuscript that is a half hearted apology or love letter for Lolita. But in no way do I see Humbert as anything but a predator dominating his prey, or perhaps reclaiming the true events of the narration and embellishing.
This novel is beautifully written, and quite frankly haunting. I really enjoy the way Nabokov writes and if you can stomach reading this novel just once then you should. I would like to say that I will go back and read this again someday but I don’t think it’ll be any time soon. I don’t think this book could be written any other way and be as much as a success, because while taboo is successfully propelled forwards in this narrative Lolita (although the victim of the story, the powerless, the possession, and the dehumanised) is somehow the antagonist.
This novel has had much the same effect on me as Mary, that is to say I really want to read more of Nabokov’s work. Lolita is beautifully written at times and I want to fall into Nabokov’s verse and live there. But this is also highly triggering book and made from the stuff of nightmares, so tread with caution.
The Shelf Wanderer 