Lolita (1955)

'It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.'

Lolita is likely one of the most controversial stories in 20th century literature to date. Lolita has been coined as a 'love story' and even 'erotic'. In all honesty, this was simply Humbert attempting to convince himself (and others) that his actions were normal and completely justified. By the end pages, I could honestly say that Humbert believed wholeheartedly he truly loved Lolita, that he always had the best of intentions for her and that he was a good father to her. His version of love was of course far from normal and was quite sick and twisted indeed but because we're only seeing this story from his point of view it's obviously a biased and glamorized interpretation.

'We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.'

But to me that was the most amazing part of this story. When you really think about this story as a whole, you know what he did was wrong, you know that he changed that 12 year-old girl irrevocably and you can almost despise him for the fact that he blamed her for seducing him initially. However, despite all that, I know I'm not the only reader that struggled to not feel at least a slight bit of sympathy for him. And that's the true brilliance of it.

'And the rest is rust and stardust.'

Lolita is a truly remarkably written story that was undoubtedly shocking after its initial publication in 1955. I can't help but find it severely unlikely though that it would have ever been published during this day and age. ( )

I read this book the first time in my late teens and was absolutely horrified. Since then I have reread the story several times and every time I am astonished anew, also this time I listened to the unabridged audiobook version narrated by Jeremy Irons who did a marvelous job at reading this story.

French academic and literary scholar Humbert Humbert comes to America to renew his life after his divorce in France and a prolonged stay in a psychiatric hospital. Soon he meets Dolores Haze the 11 year old daughter of his new landlady and widow Mrs. Haze. Dolores his LOLITA – LO-LEE-TA.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

So what is it what makes a book about a pedophile so fascinating? In an almost perfect way, Nabokov describes the pedophile Humbert Humbert, without judgment, without representing the sex offender as a bad person, and alone for this reason the story is so impressive. Here, it is the style which is so clearly manipulative and ironic. The plot is predictable, and Nabokov succeeds again and again to outline detailed possible actions and then allow them to collapse into themselves. We feel the love of Humbert towards his Lolita – without him never acknowledging the GIRL Dolores – and we quickly recognize the depths such illness brings with it. One is constantly torn between disgust and comprehension, between pity and hatred.

On top of that Humbert is a smart storyteller, who often tries to manipulate the reader with incredible questionable arguments; trying to justify his acts and desires. The further the story moves along, the more he loses the outlook on reality and becomes more and more victim to paranoia. We do not just see Humbert’s obsessive and insatiable lust for the young Lolita, but we also see what life with him does to her, how she cries at night, how she learns to manipulate him to achieve her own ends, how she grows to hate him more and more.

“She considered me as if grasping all at once the incredible -- and somehow tedious, confusing and unnecessary -- fact that the distant, elegant, slender, forty-year-old valetudinarian in velvet coat sitting beside her had known and adored every pore and follicle of her pubescent body. In her washed-out gray eyes, strangely spectacled, our poor romance was for a moment reflected, pondered upon, and dismissed like a dull party, like a rainy picnic to which only the dullest bores had come, like a humdrum exercise, like a bit of dry mud caking her childhood.”

We are shown a story of decadence and decline, the beautiful ugliness of corruption presented with a narrator who manages to persuade us to sympathize with him from time to time, even so that he is a ruthless and despicable villain. Nabokov’s use of language and translation of a difficult topic into literature – well, absolutely amazing! ( )

Beautiful, dark, twisted, funny, haunting, lovely, relentlessly engaging, and thoroughly uncomfortable. ( )

Lolita, the modern classic, is infamous enough to avert any stereotype and was definitely a wrong choice for me at this early stage of my “journey to classics”. The content is pathetic, obscene enough to be digested by anyone. Though, as I read a few more of these lately, it doesn’t took much time to conclude that “No modern fiction is complete without these explicit scenes described in lengths greater than actually required”.

Anyhow,the scintillating flow of the language by Nabokov is awe-striking. Such a good control over English, despite Russian being his vernacular definitely demands respect.Strength of the eloquence and the lively use of imagery at times become subtle enough to comprehend. The plot is a chase of the main character “Lolita” and his step father all across the east just for the sake of their survival.

Analyzing it holistically, the only statement that strikes me is that it is a “funny serious thriller” to be read once, criticized twice and never in one’s lifetime recommended to anyone. Commendation for the elusive piece of literature is also enough to compete with the renunciation it has faced lately ( )

I won't rate this book.
It is brilliantly written, but I hated it.

I had totally wrong ideas about this book when I started reading - some vague notion, that it is a story about a forbidden love, piquant because of the girl's age, but an amour fou, not quite right, but love nonetheless. I only saw some short scenes of the movie with Jeremy Irons.
Boy, was I wrong.
In reality this is the memoirs of a pedophiliac who rapes/abuses his 12 year old step daughter. She is not the first child he molests and there is no love involved as I understand it.
I understand also that it was the author's intent to show the vileness of the protagonist's thoughts, feelings and behaviours, but the facts that it was 1st person POV made it so very hard to bear. Pages after pages of justification of his behaviour, recrimination towards the victim, disgusting thoughts about sexual acts with children and so on.

No easy or recreational read, that's for sure.
A brilliant book, also for sure.