Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

What what what I'm back! Yeah, it took me ten days to finish that last post. In that time I finished this book, read about 5/7ths of a Ray Bradbury short story collection and most of Sense and Sensibility, the latter I would be done with if Willoughby didn't make me want to break a board in half with my forehead. (Did I use 'latter' right? I always get former and latter confused.)

Anyway. Here we go, Nabokov's 'contemporary American classic' Lolita. The book is about Humbert Humbert, a middleaged man with a particular love for 'nymph/ets'--young girls, something like ages 8-14. Lolita is his main flame around whom most of the book unsurprisingly orbits around. His obsession with nymphets appears to stem from a brief tryst with a girl around the age of thirteen when he too was in his youth. Lolita herself is the daughter of the woman who he's renting a room from. At the start she is twelve and very much a catty little brat. I have a movie book with a special section on Kubrick, and a write-up on his film adaption of the book, and with it there's a close-up picture of Lolita peering over heart-shaped sunglasses and seductively sucking on a lollipop--and my first thought upon looking at it is always "she looks like a catty little bitch". Well, yeah, she is--she is exactly the personality I inferred from that one still. She's a brat, not raised correctly, and also believe it or not promiscuous (to a certain extent, because the story is told by Humbert Humbert and not an omniscient narrator, we can't be sure of how promiscuous she actually was). All right: Begin!




Humbert's chapter one, what would be the introduction if not for the foreword which is a write-up by a nonexistent PhD, reads as follows: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of my tongue taking a trip of three steps... 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. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns" (11). One: Where the hell does he get the name Lolita from Dolores? There had to have been an explanation for this I missed. (The usage of the word* nowadays comes from the book itself, so no help there.) Two: Did he just compare himself to Jesus? Tangle of thorns--thorn of crowns? He just implied he was a--for the literary phrase--a Christ figure? Yeah, yeah he just did. Ooookay.

In the fifth chapter, Humbert describes exactly what constitutes a nymphet, the age, the look, and how only certain few can stop them--you must be an "artist and a madman... with a bubble of hot poison in your lines and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine" (19). To this he adds, in parenthesis, "oh, how you have to cringe and hide!" (19). So, on one level, he's aware, very aware, that it is not an acceptable condition, his--but at the same time, his in length details and explanation of his "hot poison" are enough to make your skin crawl like that steak in Poltergeist.

"Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for" (21). That is, Humbert could have sex with a normal acceptable woman of his age but preferred children--nymphets--demons--Liliths and their far more tempting ways. (Because he is clearly more attracted sexually and otherwise to the youthful females, and Lilith in her legendarium--a stronger base in Jewish tradition rather than Christian, though she does appear once in a while--is the sexually appealing female as opposed to Eve who... wasn't? Well, Lilith is essentially a succubus, lamia, et cetera.) Humbert also attempts to... eh, I can't think of the word... but say his tastes were okay based on famous figures, Dante and Petrarch (?) who loved certain girls of nine and twelve, respectively. He also admits he had the "utmost respect for ordinary children" (21) and their innocence--note the wording. Ordinary children.


"Oh, my Lolita! I have only words to play with!" (32). Okay, I remember being made uneasy--incredibly so at some points to the point of feeling stomachsick--while I read, but rereading it chills me ever more. What's the weirdest part is, is because of the strangely childish way it is written (for example, Humbert often refers to himself by his own name as a child often will when agitated or playing) you feel disgusted--but at the same time can't help but like the guy, at least a little. There are parts where you literally want to be sick, put the book down, kill Humbert--but you feel weirdly for the guy. It's hard to understand unless you read it, I guess, but it probably has a bit to do with that it's written from his perspective. Again, read it and get back to me. (I assume it's written in the fashion I imagine it to be--if I am correct--to reflect his taste in the immature, and possibly signal the immaturity in his own mind, for being attracted to children--never aging in his tastes or for the rest of mind. Maybe?)


His description of Canada/Alaska--"We lived in prefabricated timber cabins amid a Pre-Cambrian world of granite" (33). No, I didn't just show favor to this quote because he mentions a prehistory era, I actually thought it sounded cool of its own merit! (And I feel like it's a very 'Mountains of Madness'-esque description or Lovecraftian in general description.) In the next breath he complains about eskimo girls--"Nymphets do not occur in polar regions" (33), which made me laugh, admittedly.


Humbert when dealing with Lolita at least early on speaks a few times of the devil tempting him and then scorning him with her--giving him a chance gaze or gasp and then ruining it. In which case, to further thwart his picture of himself as a Christ in a crown of thorns he was tempted and fell to the temptation. My next mark is an obvious biblical reference again to Adam and Eve--Lolita is tossing about an apple (Humbert even describes it as "Eden-red" [55], might I add!) and on one throw she throws it up--and Humbert, sitting next to her upon sofa, caught it above her waiting hands. While he holds it, she takes a bite of it. From that moment on, we know exactly where eventually she will head. But wait, there's more! A few moments later, same scene, he takes Lolita's magazine from her and she pounces upon him, ending up sitting in his lap. He does not take her then--but he does have his, uh, own moment--what he refers to as a spasm--that Lolita is completely unaware of.


Humbert has a mild fantasy in which he imagines giving Lolita and her single (but not for long) mother sleeping tablets so he may have his way with Lolita and then imagines the confrontation about the pregnancy which would ensue. "'Mother, I swear Kenny never even touched me.' 'You either lie, Dolores Haze, or it was an incubus'" (67). This is just me being annoying: according to folk tradition, incubi cannot impregnate their victims (at least not without help from a succubus). Just saying.


"Remarkable how difficult it is to conceal things--especially when one's wife keeps on monkeying with the furniture" (87).

At one point Humbert does drug the girl, though he does not enact his plan... But as proof that Humbert is not a narrator we can entirely trust, we have Lolita partially drugged removing a velvet ribbon from her hair, saying she's been such a "disgusting girl" (113) and wants to go on and tell him how so. That's a sexually-charged scene that's certainly a product of a fantasy of Humbert's, probably based on Lolita saying just that (as she kissed Humbert earlier in the chapter) but the pulling of the velvet ribbon out of her hair, tossing it about and what the whole scene gives the feeling of--it has been bent by Humbert.


It is Lolita who initiates the first actual act of intercourse between them--something she at that point had apparently had a few times with a few male friends. What is apparently considered normal 'sex play', at least by Humbert. I--what? Is this a forties and older thing? Maybe I was just a prude nine-year-old? Or maybe this book is actually set in Brave New World. Lolita didn't even know its relation to reproduction. Apparently it's a thing kids just did. ...Yeah, I'm thinking Brave New World.



Humbert enrolls Lolita into school, the Beardsley school, a school of epically foolish proportions. Let me give you a portion of the headmaster's school plan: "...We are more interested in communication than in composition. That is, with due respect to Shakespeare and others, we want our girls to communicate freely with the live world around them rather than plunge into musty old books... We have done away with the mass of irrelevant topics that have traditionally presented to young girls, leaving no place, in former days, for the knowledges and the skills, and the attitudes they will need in managing their lives and... the lives of their husbands. Let us put it this way: the position of a star is important, but the most practical spot for an icebox in the kitchen may be even more important to the budding housewife" (162). The headmaster goes on to add that weekend dates or more important than Medieval dates to the modern child, and what could a child care for learning about Ancient Greece or other history or anything, really. That's pretty much a 'well, let's not even try'! Humbert says upon hearing this he was appalled--with which I can wholeheartedly agree. I only mention it because of how appalling exactly it is. I hope schools don't exist like this nowadays. Another thing I want to mention is during this speech, she refers to Humbert by name several times--obviously Humbert Humbert is a pseudonym, and as if to prove this further she calls him by several different but similar names.



At one point they stop in the sound town of Soda--"Soda, pop 1001" (201). Very clever, Nabokov. I chuckled.



The scene that made me want to kill Humbert the most was when Lolita has a fever. He checks her breathing, undresses her and decides she must be sick after inspecting her lower feminine regions. Besides just looking, he tastes them. Then and only then does he give up "all hope of intercourse" (219) and take her to the hospital. Absolutely repulsive, even moreso than all else, even.



"'Because really... there is no point in staying here.' 'There is no point in staying anywhere,' said Lolita" (222).


"One mercifully hopes there are water nymphs in the Styx" (228). Humbert, of course.


"I could not kill her, of course, as some have thought. You see I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight" (246).


The ending isn't too shabby, either. Maybe I haven't mentioned (in which case, shame on me) that this whole book is written as a testimonial while Humbert is in prison. So, the end is an acceptance of his future which is rather sweet, even with Humbert's past acts in mind--nowhere near a complete redeemer of him or his situation, but. He gives Lolita his best, gives her some advice, and makes the request that this testimony of his only be published after Lolita's death--"And this is the only immortality you and I will share, my Lolita" (281).


Afterwards, there is a, well, afterword by Nabokov himself. Instantly I was hooked to this thing--in the second paragraph he talks about how much he hates people who prod for the author's purpose in writing such a thing in particular, or what exactly he meant to say in his work. He was none to fond of symbols and allegories, either. Vladimir... I think we just became best friends.


Don't have much to say. It was an okay book. It was certainly engaging, interesting and oftentimes disturbing, but I wouldn't say it's quite a 'contemporary classic'. This was probably one of the first if not the very first widely-distributed book that were about pedophilia (don't quote me on this though) and thus, to beat a dead horse, automatically gained a status. But it's actually worth a read, unlike other books in that category... Yeah, that's right, I'm looking at you Mary Shelley. You want to go!?

MLA information: Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. New York: Berkely Medallion Books, 1977. Print.



Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: The Reeling by Passion Pit


This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: They say I'll only do you wrong--We come together cause I understand just who you really are, yeah

*True story. Gothic lolitas, girls dressed in those Alice in Wonderland-esque dresses, trying to look like young porcelain dolls (they're particularly popular in Japan) all have their roots from the title of this book and its subject matter.

PS. Got a haircut! I feel like Lola from Run, Lola, Run, even though my hair isn't as short, as messy, or as red.