Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov.

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
New York: Berkeley Medallion Books. 1955.

Why read it? Ah ha! A dirty book! Right? The basic plot certainly seems so. Nabokov says it is actually a celebration of the American language and culture, and anyone who reads it will begin to realize this purpose during the odyssey of Humbert and Lolita across America. In some ways, Lolita is like Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

Nabokov says that people object to the theme itself, not his treatment of the theme. The distinction is significant. The book is not pornographic. Pornography is not its purpose. Many of his scenes have nothing to do with anything pornographic, although pornography hunters will not notice those scenes. Lolita is sheer fun, as Nabokov plays with the American language and culture.

Novel. Published in France in 1955; U.S., 1958. Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged intellectual who has a passion for girls between the ages of nine and fourteen. He falls in love with the twelve-year-old Dolores Haze, whom he calls Lolita. In his plot to seduce her, he marries Dolores's mother, whose accidental death then allows Lolita and Humbert to take off on an odyssey across the U.S. Humbert is surprised when, contrary to his schemes, Lolita seduces him and again when she leaves him for Clare Quilty whom Humbert later murders. Lolita eventually marries Richard F. Schiller.

Its popular appeal as an erotic story thrust Nabokov into notoriety. It was banned in France and parts of the U.S., and its merits were debated in the British Parliament. Nabokov defended it as a moral rather than an obscene book. It combines "parody, fanciful imaginative flights, literary puzzles and a brilliant satirical overview of American culture": translation--look for these characteristics when you read the novel.

From the book:

"I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever, but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita."

"A combination of naivete and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of blue sulks and rosy mirth, Lolita, when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat."

Nabokov: "In pornographic novels, style, structure, imagery should never distract the reader from his tepid lust."

Nabokov: "Their refusal to buy the book was based not on my treatment of the theme but on the theme itself...."

Nabokov remembers the many scenes in the novel that have nothing to do with Humbert's lust and on which he worked hard to create, but he reflects that people who read the novel as a sex odyssey will not notice them.

Nabokov: "After Olympia Press in Paris published the book, an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel.... Substitution of 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct."