Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita"
Okay, for somebody who kicked up such a fuss about the use of child molestation and incest in that last review of Stephen King, It doesn’t make much sense that I just finished reading Lolita.
I’m a complicated person, okay?
I’m having trouble thinking of what to say about this, if you can imagine that. On the one hand, I think it’s very well written, but at the same time I found myself bored more than a couple of times. I can easily explain that – since this is written in the style of a chronological diary/confession, the subject matter (namely being Lolita) is almost suffocating.
Yeah, yeah, he really likes this twelve-year-old. (Actually, he likes lots of twelve-year-olds, but he likes this one in particular.) But Jesus, would it hurt to have a few more extraneous characters? Whenever new characters are introduced, the two pick up and take off again, making this more of a road movie than a character study.
Or perhaps a really bad blog.
I was able to get around the subject matter with only a few qualms, which was a relief. And if your looking for lurid details from the narrator, you’ll have to go elsewhere. But he writes it as almost a challenge of the reader’s morals and mores – will they be able to get past her age and see the story as a simple case of love gained and lost? I guess I can, but I don’t particularly want to.
Besides, in the style that he’s writing, it can actually be more horrific if you want to dwell on the subject. As he says: “As greater authors than I have put it: ‘let readers imagine’ etc.”
No thanks.
So yeah, it’s a good book, and yes, he’s doing things to try and enrage, as well as bring sympathy. I think there are a lot of things I probably missed, but I really have no desire to go through it again. Not because of the subject matter of incest, but rather because I got sick of the subject matter of Lolita.
Finally, there have been several stories that have had sequels written by different authors (Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind being the only one I can think of at this late hour). I wonder when somebody will write about how Lolita was emotionally scarred for the rest of her adult life from this supposed love affair.
