I really, really, really loved reading this book, and that was probably the most unsettling thing of all about it. This book - this hilarious, gorgeous, stupifying book - is, I think, where the battle/dance/convergence/division of ethics and aesthetics is drawn most clearly.
You know the story: the vulgar/innocent tart Lo, and the cultured, sarcastic, sometimes indecipherable and rather pathetic Humbert Humbert who runs off with her and rapes her. This book is, like Moby-Dick, far less often read than referred to - such a shame. What a caricature it's become. The two books are so intricately complex, so pointedly and intentionally confused and confusing, and that is all so much a part of them that caricatures simply don't work. It just seems a travesty to me, just so irredeemably beside the point, to fit Ahab and Humbert into these cultural cliches of "man out for revenge" and "pedophile." Read the books, damn it, and you'll understand that playing with those cliches and subverting them is the point, but never becoming them. (Exit huffy repressed literary snob.)
Which is really quite ironic, given that throughout Lolita there is this very conscious derision toward... how do I put it? I'm not sure. Depth, maybe. Is depth the word? There is, in fact, a difference between depth and complexity, and I'm inclined to say that Nabakov has the latter and not the former. There is a distinct strain involving rejection of, and naturally also mockery of, so-called "depth." The first thing Humbert tells us is that there was a girl-child in his youth, and, walking that razor-line between heavy serious meaning and utter facetiousness, proceeds to say that he spent time in a mental institution and found a wonderful pasttime in the form of tormenting doctors, inventing dreams and motivations. Yay trashing psychoanalysis. (Oh, my aspiring lit critic self needed that, as do lit critics in general, I think.) Humbert is a pedophile, and this is in no way condoned; Humbert is too problematic and (despite his verbal gymnastics) comes off as rather weak. You don't always sympathize, not by a long shot. But it is also not really explained, and it is balanced by Humbert's more charming moments. How much of him and his situation are you supposed to understand? Lolita, seductive brat that she often is, is raped. She sobs her heart out in Humbert's arms, who abuses his role as guardian in the worst way imaginable. What are you supposed to make of this? The instinct is to ask why, because there must be a reason and it must be avoidable, and I don't think an answer is forthcoming and I think that is precisely what was intended. (Nabakov hates allegories and symbols.)
Are you supposed to parse out Humbert? You are (there are many clues, like a detective novel), and you aren't (silly inadequate psychology can't figure him out, why try? why try to make everything a symbol?), and it's so difficult. The man is admittedly a compulsive liar and you never, ever quite know if what he's saying is earnestness or he's being, as he is entirely capable of doing, completely flippant. He's probably being both, earnestly flippant and flippantly earnest. He is this insanely cultured man, this incredibly articulate and allusive man, and he laments, "I have only words to play with!" But those words are so gorgeous. What is Nabakov saying, here, with his endless allusions and his impossibly fluid poetic descriptions, with Humbert's admitted solipsism, about aesthetics and ethics, about art and life? He seems to be saying, simultaneously, that both aesthetics and ethics fall short.
I'll repeat the most important bit of all this for emphasis: this book is fucking beautiful. The language is just completely spellbinding, with its impeccably skillful use of alliteration, metaphors, puns. (Yes, puns. Nabakov is one of two people I know who pulls off puns flawlessly. Shakespeare is the other.) It also alludes to, like, everything. Ever. I really can't overemphasize how lovely the descriptions are and how apt the allusions ("lovely" is inadequate, like it's some overly flowery romance novel, but it's lovely the way a knife blade is lovely). I have a side to me that definitely appreciates the whole art for art's sake, beauty-is-truth-is-beauty, beauty is it's own meaning aesthetic, and I just found it all profoundly entrancing which isn't exactly the best thing to admit to yourself when you're reading about some of the things Nabakov talks of. This intricate beauty is, literally, Humbert's defense speech, and you, addressed as the jury, are made to judge it. It's just this huge living paradox. I wasn't able to deal with it well. Some people seem to think it's all the more despicable for its beauty, some find the seduction works and relax their moral standards for a moment. I was the latter, and it drove me mildly insane.
Another point: Nabakov wrote this essay which is in the edition of my book (which is, thank god, heavily annotated - if you read this book, GET AN ANNOTATED EDITION, because it simply can't be fully appreciated otherwise). He basically describes how cheap, cliche-ridden, indulgent and banal pornography (eroticism) has become, how separated lust has become from the aesthetic. Cliches are used as a vehicle to provide the audience with the simplest path to stimulation possible. People become a configuration of certain select body parts. Often you look at these pictures and you see breasts and not a person. I'll just say this: Lolita is never described in these terms. She is never reduced to a pair of breasts (maybe the fact she can't be, having none, is the point, to be crude). She is sometimes described in terms that are ugly and leering, but she is always a whole, desirable being, from her dirty blue jeans to her 'long, delicate-boned, monkeyish toes' to her warm brown skin. This is part of the allure; it provides a kind of wholeness to eroticism, a poetry, which is just so anomalous in this culture right now...
5 
You know the story: the vulgar/innocent tart Lo, and the cultured, sarcastic, sometimes indecipherable and rather pathetic Humbert Humbert who runs off with her and rapes her. This book is, like Moby-Dick, far less often read than referred to - such a shame. What a caricature it's become. The two books are so intricately complex, so pointedly and intentionally confused and confusing, and that is all so much a part of them that caricatures simply don't work. It just seems a travesty to me, just so irredeemably beside the point, to fit Ahab and Humbert into these cultural cliches of "man out for revenge" and "pedophile." Read the books, damn it, and you'll understand that playing with those cliches and subverting them is the point, but never becoming them. (Exit huffy repressed literary snob.)
Which is really quite ironic, given that throughout Lolita there is this very conscious derision toward... how do I put it? I'm not sure. Depth, maybe. Is depth the word? There is, in fact, a difference between depth and complexity, and I'm inclined to say that Nabakov has the latter and not the former. There is a distinct strain involving rejection of, and naturally also mockery of, so-called "depth." The first thing Humbert tells us is that there was a girl-child in his youth, and, walking that razor-line between heavy serious meaning and utter facetiousness, proceeds to say that he spent time in a mental institution and found a wonderful pasttime in the form of tormenting doctors, inventing dreams and motivations. Yay trashing psychoanalysis. (Oh, my aspiring lit critic self needed that, as do lit critics in general, I think.) Humbert is a pedophile, and this is in no way condoned; Humbert is too problematic and (despite his verbal gymnastics) comes off as rather weak. You don't always sympathize, not by a long shot. But it is also not really explained, and it is balanced by Humbert's more charming moments. How much of him and his situation are you supposed to understand? Lolita, seductive brat that she often is, is raped. She sobs her heart out in Humbert's arms, who abuses his role as guardian in the worst way imaginable. What are you supposed to make of this? The instinct is to ask why, because there must be a reason and it must be avoidable, and I don't think an answer is forthcoming and I think that is precisely what was intended. (Nabakov hates allegories and symbols.)
Are you supposed to parse out Humbert? You are (there are many clues, like a detective novel), and you aren't (silly inadequate psychology can't figure him out, why try? why try to make everything a symbol?), and it's so difficult. The man is admittedly a compulsive liar and you never, ever quite know if what he's saying is earnestness or he's being, as he is entirely capable of doing, completely flippant. He's probably being both, earnestly flippant and flippantly earnest. He is this insanely cultured man, this incredibly articulate and allusive man, and he laments, "I have only words to play with!" But those words are so gorgeous. What is Nabakov saying, here, with his endless allusions and his impossibly fluid poetic descriptions, with Humbert's admitted solipsism, about aesthetics and ethics, about art and life? He seems to be saying, simultaneously, that both aesthetics and ethics fall short.
I'll repeat the most important bit of all this for emphasis: this book is fucking beautiful. The language is just completely spellbinding, with its impeccably skillful use of alliteration, metaphors, puns. (Yes, puns. Nabakov is one of two people I know who pulls off puns flawlessly. Shakespeare is the other.) It also alludes to, like, everything. Ever. I really can't overemphasize how lovely the descriptions are and how apt the allusions ("lovely" is inadequate, like it's some overly flowery romance novel, but it's lovely the way a knife blade is lovely). I have a side to me that definitely appreciates the whole art for art's sake, beauty-is-truth-is-beauty, beauty is it's own meaning aesthetic, and I just found it all profoundly entrancing which isn't exactly the best thing to admit to yourself when you're reading about some of the things Nabakov talks of. This intricate beauty is, literally, Humbert's defense speech, and you, addressed as the jury, are made to judge it. It's just this huge living paradox. I wasn't able to deal with it well. Some people seem to think it's all the more despicable for its beauty, some find the seduction works and relax their moral standards for a moment. I was the latter, and it drove me mildly insane.
Another point: Nabakov wrote this essay which is in the edition of my book (which is, thank god, heavily annotated - if you read this book, GET AN ANNOTATED EDITION, because it simply can't be fully appreciated otherwise). He basically describes how cheap, cliche-ridden, indulgent and banal pornography (eroticism) has become, how separated lust has become from the aesthetic. Cliches are used as a vehicle to provide the audience with the simplest path to stimulation possible. People become a configuration of certain select body parts. Often you look at these pictures and you see breasts and not a person. I'll just say this: Lolita is never described in these terms. She is never reduced to a pair of breasts (maybe the fact she can't be, having none, is the point, to be crude). She is sometimes described in terms that are ugly and leering, but she is always a whole, desirable being, from her dirty blue jeans to her 'long, delicate-boned, monkeyish toes' to her warm brown skin. This is part of the allure; it provides a kind of wholeness to eroticism, a poetry, which is just so anomalous in this culture right now...