Lolita Paperback – March 13, 1989

A Leisurely Stroll Through "Lolita," the Greatest Novel Ever WrittenNabakov, in "Lolita," does not waste a single word. Even the title is a trick. He is not in love or even in lust with Lolita. He is in love with language; with words.John Ray, Jr. (Nabakov in disguise) lays out some important facts right in the foreward of the book, warning those that picked up the book due to its scandalous reputation that they might be disappointed. In fact, Nabakov plays a great trick on all unsuspecting readers."True, not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work; indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here."Indeed, Nabakov loves words too much, has too many games to play with them, to waste time "dropping F-bombs" and other ineffectual lazy gimmicks.But no, it is more delicious than even that. Nabakov is behind the joke; he is the true writer of the foreward, disguised as "real." It is enchanting the way he is able to pull off this hoax with such elan:"...had out demented diarist gone, in the fatal summer of 1947, to a competent pyschopathologist (what is this?), there would have been no disaster; but then, neither would there have been this book. This commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual" and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come as more or less shocking surprise.""I have no intention to glorify "H.H." No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness.""A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman."This is typical of the style; dry, comical, self-deprecating, hilarious, pretending to be serious.Nabakov wastes no time, and hits us with this zinger in the first page:"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style."He describes his early love, Annabel, in the most beautiful of passionate terms:"All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh..."And then later..."I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel."One of the central themes of the book is his yearning not only for the young love he never consummated, but with the youth, and very life he had before. Who has not felt this way at some time in their life? But he personifies with Lolita. And Lolita becomes dirty and soiled, and imperfect and rotten, just like real life can be, making it clear that we just can never go back.Nabakov's prose is lyrical. It is thrilling and mouthwatering and a delight to readers. The beauty interspersed with the taboo topic only adds to its ferocious perfection. For example:"...that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half-pleasure, half-pain, came over those childish features."Stunning.And then..."But that mimosa grove- the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honeydew, and the ache remained with me, and that girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since- until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another."To dance with words with such beauty into such a twisted sick act is thrilling.He describes "nymphets:""...the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm..."And the way he describes "himself" is just so vivid and lyrical:"You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine..."And this:"The dimmest of my pollutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most talented impotent might imagine."But he is so self-deprecating and playful with words that he can downplay the depravity with this pretty sentence:"I daresay you see me already frothing at the mouth in a fit; but no, I am not; I am just winking happy thoughts into a little tiddle cup."Beyond the lust for Lo is something deeper, a lust for life, especially his youth:"Ah, leave me alone in my pubescent park, in my mossy garden." This sentence with "mossy garden" is so delicious with double entendre, yet not dirty or direct enough to for him to be caught.Even when he is self-deprecating, he does it out of extreme ego. But when he is egotistical, his writing is absolutely perfect:"Well did I know, alas, that I could obtain at the snap of my fingers any adult female I chose; in fact, it had become quite a habit with me of not being too attentive to women lest they come toppling, bloodripe, into my cold lap." Who writes like this? "bloodripe?" What a perfect, made up word, full of meaning.He makes the most pathetic or banal events hilarious, such as this incident in which he catches his first wife in the act with a Russian man:"I noticed with a spasm of fierce disgust that the former Counselor of the Tsar, after thoroughly easing his bladder, had not flushed the toilet. That solemn pool of alien urine with a soggy, tawny cigarette butt disintegrating in it struck me as a crowning insult, and I wildly looked around for a weapon."I love these flashes of brilliance that also expose his madness.He manages to describe the absurdity of life, such as this description of an experiment conducted by a distinguished scientist:"The experiment dealt with human and racial reactions to a diet of bananas and dates in a constant position on all fours. My informant, a doctor, swore he had seen with his own eyes obese Valechka and her colonel, by then gray-haired and also quite corpulent, diligently crawling about the well-swept floors of a brightly lit set of rooms, in the company of several other hired quadrupeds, selected from indigent and helpless groups. I tried to find the results of these tests in the Review of Anthropology; but they appear not to have been published yet."This is the real title to the book. This entire novel could be the fantasies of a madman, a sequence of dreams, a dance with words. Would it matter if it was? Not in the least.In the afterward, he says indirectly that Lolita was "his love affair with the English language." And amusingly, he implies that his books in Russian are much better, and says "I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses - the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions- which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way."Imagine the joy in reading Nabakov, in Russian, as an educated native speaker!And much later he writes:"But really these are irrelevant matters; I am not concerned with so-called "sex" at all."One of my favorite passages in the book is how he describes how much he enjoyed fooling around while he was in the sanatorium. He makes Randle Patrick McMurphy of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" seem like a rank amateur:"I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style (which make them, the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake "primal scenes"; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one's real sexual predicament. By bribing a nurse I won access to some files and discovered, with glee, cards calling me "potentially homosexual" and "totally impotent." The sport was so excellent, its results - in my case - so ruddy that I stayed on for a whole month after I was quite well (sleeping admirably and eating like a schoolgirl). And then I added another week just for the pleasure of taking on a powerful newcomer, a displaced (and, surely, deranged) celebrity, known for his knack of making patients believe they had witnessed their own conception."More funny ways to say the serious:"I exchanged letters with these people, satisfying them I was housebroken, and spent a fantastic night on the train, imagining in all possible detail the enigmatic nymphet I would coach in French and fondle in Humbertish."Nabakov as more verbal weapons at his disposal than an army, but when he wants a better one, he just makes it up! And then:"...his house had just burned down - possibly, owing to the synchronous conflagration that had been raging all night in my veins."It's very clear, that at least in Humbert's mind, no nymphet is a pure, innocent child. That is not what he is attracted to. His desires are more subtle, more nuanced:"What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet - of every nymphet, perhaps; this mixture in my Lolita of tender dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity, stemming from the snub-nosed cuteness of ads and magazine pictures, (...) and from very young harlots disguised as children in provincial brothels;"Even a list of students at Lo's school is fair game for Nabakov's word play. Almost every one has a subtle or not so subtle double entendre for a name:"Angel, GraceBuck, DanielFantasia, StellaFlashman, IrvingFox, GeorgeFalter, Ted"And on and on. (In the afterward, Nabakov claims this is one of his favorite parts of the book that he "pick(s) out for special delectation.")Not every sentence is half a paragraph long. Some of his best are short:"We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo."Again, one of the fun things is the way Nabakov makes up words:"The stars that sparkled, and the cars that parkled...""...how I might eventually blackmail - no that is too strong a word - mauvemail big Haze into letting me..."The way he describes the lack of a penetrative sex act is poetic:"The conjurer had poured milk, molasses, foaming champagne into a young lady's new white purse; and lo, the purse was intact."And describing his own drunkenness in the perfect lyrical sentence:"The gin and Lolita were dancing in me, and I almost fell over the folding chairs that I attempted to dislodge."His foreshadowing is blunt, which only adds to the humor, since it's already obvious this is not going to end well:"A few more words about Mrs. Humbert while the going is good (a bad accident is to happen quite soon).""No man can bring about the perfect murder; chance, however, can do it."He respects no one:"...with Lady Bumble - or Sam Bumble, the Frozen Meat King, or a Hollywood harlot."And more double entendre snuck in among his snobbishness:"Palace Sentries, or Scarlet Guards, or Beaver Eaters, or whatever they are called."In his madness, he does describe the pathetic lot of many men:"When you decorate your home, I do not interfere with your schemes. When you decide - when you decide all kinds of matters, I may be in complete, or in partial, let us say, disagreement - but I say nothing. I ignore the particular. I cannot ignore the general. I love being bossed by you, but every game has its rules."He readily admits his depraved behavior, in a deadpan, but hilarious way, by dropping in quick vignettes like this one:"Finally, I did achieve an hour's slumber - from which I was aroused by gratuitous and horribly exhausting congress with a small hairy hermaphrodite, a total stranger."His descriptions of the vast country of the United States, with its motor inns and barely-under-the-surface depravity are colorful:"...all along our rout countless motor courts proclaimed their vacancy in neon lights, ready to accommodate salesmen, escaped convicts, impotents, family groups, as well as the most corrupt and vigorous couples."His snobbish attitude:"I needed a drink; but there was no barroom in that venerable place full of perspiring philistines and period objects."He skewers religion and marriage in one fell swoop:"There is nothing wrong, say both hemispheres, when a brute of forty, blessed by the local priest and bloated with drink, sheds his sweat-drenched finery and thrusts himself up to the hilt into his youthful bride."He laughs at the ludicrous nature of the world:"I derived a not exclusively economic kick from such roadside signs as TIMBER HOTEL, Children under 14 Free."This sentence is an entire paragraph, and for readers, Mobius Loop of great writing:"Now in perusing what follows, the reader should bear in mind not only the general circuit as adumbrated above, with its many sidetrips and tourist traps, secondary circles and skittish deviations, but also the fact that far from being an indolent partie de plaisir, our tour was a hard, twisted, teleological growth, whose sole raison d'etre (these French clichés are symptomatic) was to keep my companion in passable humor from kiss to kiss."Nabakov is never blunt or crude when describing the sex act. Here is an elegant, pithy way he writes it:"Venus came and went."One of the best plays with words is when he is discussing Lo with the headmistress Pratt, and she keeps on using the wrong name for Mr. Humbert, and his Lolita:"Mr. Humbird...Dolly...Dorothy Humbird...Dr. Humburg...Mr. Humberson...Dr. Hummer...Dorothy Hummerson"His descriptions of others, stream of consciousness, with the ultimate insult being how terrible a man's language was:"He always wore black, even his tie was black; he seldom bathed; his English was a burlesque. And, nonetheless, everybody considered him to be a supremely lovable, lovably freakish fellow!"But he saves his best insults for Gaston, his real or imagined rival for Lo's attention:"There he was, devoid of any talent whatsoever, a mediocre teacher, a worthless scholar, a glum repulsive fat old invert, highly contemptuous of the American way of life, triumphantly ignorant of the English language - there he was in priggish New England, crooned over by the old and caressed by the young- oh, having a grand time and fooling everybody; and here was I."How do you read things like this without laughing out loud?"Dolly has written a most obscene four-letter word which our Dr. Cutler tells me is low-Mexican for urinal..."And:"Should I marry Pratt and strangle her?"And this crazy sentence, which shows his madness and depravity and brilliance at once:"It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the ability - a most singular case, I presume - of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest."Great descriptions, this of the American countryside:"... the enchanted interspace slid on intact, mathematical, mirage-like, the viatic counterpart of a magic carpet."And just plain silliness:"We had breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001."The way he describes his terror at being caught, after it has faded:"... there was a day or two of lovely release (I had been a fool, all was well, that discomfort was merely a trapped flatus)"Who hasn't felt that way before- something that bothers you viscerally, fades in importance?And finally he drops the inevitable punch line, as if he was waiting the entire novel to say it, when Lolita has escaped him:"There was no Lo to behold."Nabakov at one point finally breaks out in poetic verse, which is effortless for him, because all of his writing is so lyrical. And in his usual style, he uses a sentence to develop the Humbert character further:"By psychoanalyzing this poem, I notice it is really a maniac's masterpiece."He describes later Rita, his companion that he picked up "some depraved May evening between Montreal and New York" and says of her "She was so kind, was Rita, such a good sport, that I daresay she would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion."And soon thereafter, one of my favorite sentences in the entire novel of great sentences:"It is no the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art."His description here is perfect:"...in a hideous hotel, the kind where they hold conventions and where labeled, fat pink men stagger around, all first names and business and booze..."He sneaks some truths in:"I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art."He makes us laugh even with the silly, childish acts like this passage, in which he asks a dentist for a price quote:"'No,' I said. `On second thoughts, I shall have it all done by Dr. Molnar. His price is higher, but he is of course a much better dentist than you.' I don't know if any of my readers will ever have a chance to say that. It is a delicious dream feeling."Such silliness and even the "Dr. Molnar."Only Nabakov can describe masturbation in such elegant terms:"The house, being an old one, had more planned privacy than have modern glamour-boxes, where the bathroom, the only lockable locus, has to be used for the furtive needs of planned parenthood."In his post-novel comments, Nabakov gives more clues on the novel, admitting that the forward by the fictional John Ray steals some of his credibility when discussing the novel from a distance. But he does tell us:"I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and despite John Ray's assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow."He tells us the "secret points, the subliminal coordinates by which the book is plotted- although I realize very clearly that these and other scenes will be skimmed over or not noticed..."He finishes the novel on a high note, expressing the truth, only art endures, if it isn't written down it didn't happen:"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita."Throughout this brilliant, perfect, lyrical novel, Nabakov alternates between lies, fantasies, funny stories and fabrications. But he does sometimes admit the truth, such as when he bluntly says:"Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with."

Notwithstanding its tabooed subject matter, Nabokov's ability at capturing the intensity of longing, despair, passion and rapture is enthralling. The story in many respects isn't an easy read. The extensive vocabulary and obscure references insure that there was much I probably missed. But it did not take away from the awe of Vladimir Nabokov's incredible mastery of the English language along with sprinklings of French and German as far as I could decipher.Story-wise, the cold and calculated way Humbert Humbert goes about seducing 12-year-old Dolores is difficult to endure especially as the reader is privy to every manner of plan and execution. Of course as this is almost entirely from Humbert's perspective, the reader is only able to glean Lolita, his private name for her, and other characters from that perspective notwithstanding his own scrupulous attempt at objectivity. From this perspective we discover a Lolita in many ways a typical 12- year-old of the times yet with a beguiling precociousness. She's brash and bratty and not shy about her sexuality, burgeoning though it may be. There is Dolores' mother Charlotte, needy and in a hateful rivalry with her daughter for Humbert's affections. Humbert himself is erudite, superior and routinely disdainful of all who pass his way. Yet under the spell of his own longing and desire for Lolita, becomes the very entity he scorns.What stands out and continues to draw me to this work is the depths of emotion Humbert subjects himself to albeit much of it through his obsession for Lolita. It made me question the idea of love and what it is supposed to mean. It's clear that Humbert's feelings for Lolita are profound but one could not but question whether this love is centered more on an ideal Lolita rather than the real life Dolores. His ongoing obsession with "nymphs" and "girl children" finally finds release in the ideal form, in many ways, of Dolores Haze. Ideal because she was a willing participant at least initially and fit the criteria of being a young girl, an ideal nymphet in that regard. Yet this nymphet turns out to also be impudent, petulant with banal tastes, not exactly a fantasy combination for the highbrow Humbert. Yet his declarations of love and devotion is always steadfast and much to his surprise goes on to extend past her "nymphage" years. At the end, I was left with the unsettling thought that perverted and unseemly though it may be perhaps it could be qualified as love. Not the not-so-common pure and selfless kind but the sullied and soiled kind where self-interest, manipulation and in Humbert's case ultimately murder is par for the course.What is even more fascinating about this book is the twist taken by Nabalov with the character of Lolita. By taking the child abuse scenario in a different direction and not making her the frightened, quivering Little Red Riding Hood to Humbert's Big Bad Wolf. Nabokov still does a remarkable job of keeping her as a believable young girl, not totally innocent but clearly not grown-up either. He is skillful at interweaving her precociousness with an obvious emotional immaturity. At age 12 in the early 1950s, she is knowledgeable and experienced in the ways of sex but in a childishly oblivious way. She is aware of the concept of incest, breezily admits to having sex at camp with her and another girl taking turns with a teen-aged boy and is the one to initiate the first sexual contact with Humbert whom she assumes is clueless about this activity which she summarizes as being "rather fun" and "good for the complexion." She then has no compunction about needling him, calling him a "dirty old man" and slyly telling him that she's going to call the cops. During their travels, she has a lot of say in where they will eat, what they will do, where they will stay. Granted this more than likely stems from Humbert's desire to appease Lolita in Humbert's words "from kiss to kiss." But through out it can be sometimes difficult to discern where the balance of power really does fall. It is interesting though the fact that despite Dolores' growing ambivalence if not outright distaste for Humbert and his foppish ways she continues the sexual relationship without much fuss considering she has no problem heartily refusing other demands made by Humbert such as reading more books, despite his pleas and threats. Perhaps sex does not have significance for Dolores one way or the other. Perhaps she knows it's a powerful leverage with Humbert although it wasn't until later on that she appears to actually start using it as such and even then still in a limited manner. The fact that everything is pretty much related from Humbert's perspective had me at times, longing for a bit more insight into Dolores' own inner thoughts.There really is a lot to this book and it would take another entire book to analyze it all. The subject of the story may be taboo but it is done in what I think is a very tasteful and non-offensive manner. It delves into so much more than a pedophile's lust for a young girl that it's hard to even know where to start. But it definitely got me thinking not just about the complexity of the human experience but the skill that it takes as a writer to express it in such an eloquent and exceptional way. As I got this as an audio-cassette, hearing Jeremy Iron and his way of bringing to life Nabokov's words allowed me a means of appreciating it all the more so. His ability to infuse the book with the sarcasm, humour, despair and vulnerability so prevalent in the book makes the writing that much more memorable.