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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Kidnapping, Death of parent
An absolutely beautiful piece of fiction about a pedophile. Who knew?
I don't think I can say anything about this book that hasn't already been said, but the main thing that stuck out to me was how absurdly, hilariously pathetic Humbert Humbert is as a character.
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
So fucking disturbing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment
Moderate: Death, Rape, Death of parent
Minor: Miscarriage, Car accident, Pregnancy
I picked this up because it was recommended online for helping to study for the GRE. It was a fabulous read. Reading about the psychological decay of Humbert Humbert feels very reminiscent of Dorian's madness in The Picture of Dorian Gray. I found this book to something of a guilty pleasure. People I talked to were a bit dismayed when they found out what this book was about, but I'd still recommend it to anyone interested in watching a soul descend into chaos.
Traumatisingly perverse, but stunningly written.
Magical prose.
Magical prose.
How on Earth do people view this primarily as a “Love story”? My copy of the book has both the description on the back and an entirely separate quote framing Humbert and Lolita’s relationship as a genuinely romantic one worthy of praise. There are certainly elements of “Love” in here to be picked apart and digested outside of Humbert’s raw carnality, but to say this is a “Love Story” is…disingenuous at best.
Nabokov walks a very tight and fine line here, which is understandably controversial, but maybe more than it should be given his execution. I mean, in my opinion, sure Humbert is dazzling in his lucid and metaphorically rich descriptions of things, but I don’t understand how you could read this and think the book WANTS YOU to see Humbert as a good guy, or somehow excuses/diminishes pedophilia. Maybe if you took Humbert at his literal word and didn’t really look between the lines at all, but I feel like even a very casual reader would detect the unreliability undertones as at points Humbert’s lies and narrative incongruities are practically shouting at the reader. There are subtler points which could be easy to miss (him killing Charlotte, for instance, is confirmed in pretty much two words), but some of it is so obviously falsely self-aggrandizing it’s comical.
Anyways, the book is phenomenal. The prose is rich, complex, pluralistic, (arguable maybe dipping into excess at a few spare points) yet somehow retains a distinct lucidity once you get used to it. I haven’t read any other Nabokov, so I’m unsure if he’s usually as verbose as he was here, but part of me wondered as I was adapting to his language if the “excess” of it was part of Humbert’s show- a purposeful obfuscation, a “stun” to the reader to create distance between the concrete reality of the book’s events and the reader’s ability to distinguish them. Something like that would be right at home in a book riddled with alcoholism, hallucinations, and general uncertainty, but given the speed at which I tore through the last third of the book without issue, I’m undecided on this.
I’m not going to go on forever, but I will bring up the final few paragraphs in my defense of “Lolita” as NOT BEING PRO-HUMBERT.
Some people may read the last few paragraphs and think the book to be portraying Humbert as truly changed or as making a case for sympathizing with Humbert. I think this is completely incorrect and, in fact, shows the complete opposite.
First of all, the sequencing makes no sense. The story is told from the same point in time all the way throughout- the sociopathic indifference, the dismissal of multiple murders, the frequent lies and obfuscations, are all explicated BY THAT SAME HUMBERT WE ARE DISGUSTED BY.
More interestingly, Humbert actually “wins” in his wish to have the manuscript published after Lolita’s death. In their last meeting, Humbert is dissatisfied with the real-world 17 year old married Lolita, and is faced with the reality that the facade of his romanticized, idyllic “nymphet” (yuck) cannot be reasonably transposed onto Lolita’s physical personhood. He still loves her, or so he claims, but his focus is more or less on revenge towards Quilty for “stealing” her from him - on harmonizing the “wrong” of being shaken from his hallucinatory trance. He drives aimlessly (not to Lolita) and surrenders with indifference to the police after murdering Quilty.
However, with the manuscript being published after Lolita’s death, Humbert’s romanticized crystallization of Lolita is actually what preservers. What exists of Lolita for the rest of time is not who she grew to be, her children, or anything that came of her life, but Humbert’s perverted obsession with her, his idyllic nymphet (eek). Humbert’s script overrides her death and establishes the “true” mnemonic Lolita as the one that exists for his fetish and in his own terms. His final act in declaring the two of them of “immortality” is one of reclamation. (and funnily enough, engages in a spiritual bending of the laws of time/space similar to Humbert’s perception of the hazy nymphet island back in the early chapters)
So no, I do not think we are supposed to see Humbert as the good guy.
There were also a few moments of Humbert’s more innocuous narration that gave me a laugh. Notably the chess scene with Gaston where Humbert describes how Gaston would “meditate for 10 minutes and then make a losing move”, or when he describes his distaste for theater saying it “smacks of stone age rites” and etc etc etc (especially given I’m not really a fan of theater myself). 5/5.
Nabokov walks a very tight and fine line here, which is understandably controversial, but maybe more than it should be given his execution. I mean, in my opinion, sure Humbert is dazzling in his lucid and metaphorically rich descriptions of things, but I don’t understand how you could read this and think the book WANTS YOU to see Humbert as a good guy, or somehow excuses/diminishes pedophilia. Maybe if you took Humbert at his literal word and didn’t really look between the lines at all, but I feel like even a very casual reader would detect the unreliability undertones as at points Humbert’s lies and narrative incongruities are practically shouting at the reader. There are subtler points which could be easy to miss (him killing Charlotte, for instance, is confirmed in pretty much two words), but some of it is so obviously falsely self-aggrandizing it’s comical.
Anyways, the book is phenomenal. The prose is rich, complex, pluralistic, (arguable maybe dipping into excess at a few spare points) yet somehow retains a distinct lucidity once you get used to it. I haven’t read any other Nabokov, so I’m unsure if he’s usually as verbose as he was here, but part of me wondered as I was adapting to his language if the “excess” of it was part of Humbert’s show- a purposeful obfuscation, a “stun” to the reader to create distance between the concrete reality of the book’s events and the reader’s ability to distinguish them. Something like that would be right at home in a book riddled with alcoholism, hallucinations, and general uncertainty, but given the speed at which I tore through the last third of the book without issue, I’m undecided on this.
I’m not going to go on forever, but I will bring up the final few paragraphs in my defense of “Lolita” as NOT BEING PRO-HUMBERT.
Some people may read the last few paragraphs and think the book to be portraying Humbert as truly changed or as making a case for sympathizing with Humbert. I think this is completely incorrect and, in fact, shows the complete opposite.
First of all, the sequencing makes no sense. The story is told from the same point in time all the way throughout- the sociopathic indifference, the dismissal of multiple murders, the frequent lies and obfuscations, are all explicated BY THAT SAME HUMBERT WE ARE DISGUSTED BY.
More interestingly, Humbert actually “wins” in his wish to have the manuscript published after Lolita’s death. In their last meeting, Humbert is dissatisfied with the real-world 17 year old married Lolita, and is faced with the reality that the facade of his romanticized, idyllic “nymphet” (yuck) cannot be reasonably transposed onto Lolita’s physical personhood. He still loves her, or so he claims, but his focus is more or less on revenge towards Quilty for “stealing” her from him - on harmonizing the “wrong” of being shaken from his hallucinatory trance. He drives aimlessly (not to Lolita) and surrenders with indifference to the police after murdering Quilty.
However, with the manuscript being published after Lolita’s death, Humbert’s romanticized crystallization of Lolita is actually what preservers. What exists of Lolita for the rest of time is not who she grew to be, her children, or anything that came of her life, but Humbert’s perverted obsession with her, his idyllic nymphet (eek). Humbert’s script overrides her death and establishes the “true” mnemonic Lolita as the one that exists for his fetish and in his own terms. His final act in declaring the two of them of “immortality” is one of reclamation. (and funnily enough, engages in a spiritual bending of the laws of time/space similar to Humbert’s perception of the hazy nymphet island back in the early chapters)
So no, I do not think we are supposed to see Humbert as the good guy.
There were also a few moments of Humbert’s more innocuous narration that gave me a laugh. Notably the chess scene with Gaston where Humbert describes how Gaston would “meditate for 10 minutes and then make a losing move”, or when he describes his distaste for theater saying it “smacks of stone age rites” and etc etc etc (especially given I’m not really a fan of theater myself). 5/5.
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes