To think that 'Lolita' is an amazing literary masterpiece?

[Electrascoffee]

I have never wanted to read this book until now, having seen the film which, imo has done the book a great disservice.

Having read it now I think the narrative is exquisite. The book is in no way suggesting that paedophilia is acceptable or normal - quite the opposite in fact. Humbert is clearly a monster - the author leaves us in no doubt about that.

My friend said it's 'a pervy book' but he's never read it! The film, I feel tried to present Humbert in a more sympathetic light which is very annoying.

In my opinion it's a masterpiece that was way ahead of its time. And challenges views about misogyny, victim blaming culture in our society wrt sex crimes.

nolongersurprised

He was a good writer. I didn't say otherwise.

I really don't care about how it's art or beautifully written when it comes to a book about an adult man having sexual desires for an underage girl and manages to turn it into an image of her seducing him.
I deeply dislike the book.

it makes the notion that Nabokov was simply transposing his desire for adult women onto children extremely problematic and unlikely

Again: nobody said that's what he did. We're talking about transposing the sensation of desire, not swapping the particular appreciation of one person or body onto another and calling it fiction. In order to write in Humbert's words, Nabakov had to consider what a man like that would consider repulsive about the adult human form and appealing about a child. It doesn't at all follow that those were his personal views.

If you're saying Nabakov's capacity to even imagine what Humbert likes/dislikes indicates misogyny and paedophilia is problematic, then a huge amount of art becomes inadmissible. And that does include anything with scenes of violence, torture, sexual assault, especially if written from the perpetrator's perspective.

I don't want to read those kind of books, in general, but I don't believe in pathologising their authors, either.

Again: nobody said that's what he did.

But someone did, Matcha. See Screaming Valenta's post at 11.95. That is exactly what she said.

*11.05

Well it's not bad but I didn't find anything particularly masterful in the writing. A good quality novel to be sure but nothing beyond that. Agree that the film is nothing like the book.

If you're saying Nabakov's capacity to even imagine what Humbert likes/dislikes indicates misogyny and paedophilia is problematic, then a huge amount of art becomes inadmissible.

I don't believe "inadmissible" is a thing. What would it be "admitted" to? And are we saying, if it is to be "admitted", I must disregard my own reaction to it? This is a free world (at least for some of us - lucky as we are). Nabokov and people who believe he was 'imagining' what it was like to have sexual desires towards children have no more right to control my reaction to his fiction than I have to censor it. He can (could!) write what he likes. I can think what I like.

'but, to write convincingly in the persona of a psychopath would, as far as I am concerned, require someone to have experienced what it is like

'So, if a person writes convincingly about the urge to murder someone, I believe they have, at some point, felt the urge to hurt someone. '

With respect pengwyn, bollocks. It is fiction. I could write a story about murder, abduction, torture if I wanted but have never felt the urge to do any.

EuphoricNight

And with respect, Euphoric, I don't think it is bollocks. If you wrote about murder/abduction/torture without ever having had any sadistic impulses, I think the narrative would read like a construct and not like the stream of consciousness of a sadist/sociopath. It's a subjective viewpoint, but it is the one I hold.

Another problem with the film is that it tries to suggest Humbert is only obsessed with Lolita because of Annabel. When in fact, he clearly is having predatory thoughts about every child he likes the look of.

To clarify, I was using an adult woman as an example of something which might invoke a transferrable sense of desire.

I don't believe "inadmissible" is a thing. What would it be "admitted" to? And are we saying, if it is to be "admitted", I must disregard my own reaction to it.

I mean, if you decide that writing a convincing first-person narrative about paedophilia/violence/murder is an indication that the writer shares those urges, then these books wouldn't be considered straight fiction any more, let alone classics. They'd be pathological case studies. Their authors, while alive, should be closely monitored for signs that they're putting their urges into action. People like Iain Banks and John Fowles would be on a watchlist.

Matcha

But that would be dependent upon everyone reacting to fiction in the same ways. There is no "safe" list. There is no authority that determines that someone isn't a paedophile or a sadist. Just because people think a text is "art" doesn't preclude any specific reaction to it, including mine. Neither would I advocate locking people up because of what they wrote.

ScreamingValenta

I know. I was pointing out that I don't think my reading of the text supports that.

Electrascoffee, is that the second film? I haven't seen the first, but I remember the second felt very much like it had fallen hook line and sinker for Humbert's voice. All sad-eyed Jeremy Irons. Visually, it was great, but (like other people have said) it did lean towards making Humbert look like the tragic-romantic figure he so often believes himself to be.

I'm sure I read that a young Natalie Portman was offered the part, but turned it down because she had reservations about the director - I seem to remember her saying it was going to be 'pure filth', but I can't find a reference for that.

I am one of those readers who couldn't get over how horrible he was about Lolita's character and about her sexuality. That is part of Humbert's monstrosity - making readers believe that "Lo is a little shit" instead of a (very plausibly) damaged child who has her own sexuality which has nothing to do with his. But of course it's a very convenient excuse for him, if she has any sexuality at all then she is not an "innocent child" and so whatever he does to her is fine (or at least excusable).

We still see that attitude now though forty-odd years of feminism has chipped away at it. And I don't know myself (and am not going to speculate) how far Nabokov agreed with Humbert on that point.

"Lolita" invites us to question all male narrators who tell stories about women without any awareness of their own misogyny.

Only if we were going to do that anyway. There is plenty in the book to undermine Humbert's view of himself but nothing inside the book that undermines his view of Lolita.

Just because people think a text is "art" doesn't preclude any specific reaction to it, including mine.

No, but there's a huge difference between 'I don't like the writer's use of adverbs' and 'I think his first-person narration shows he has paedophilic tendencies'.

The latter isn't just about your personal reaction: it's a moral/legal issue. If you're right that overly-convincing fiction demonstrates pathological tendencies in the writer (and not just in their characters), then authors who write with too much believability about illegal acts need to be monitored, for everyone's safety. And other authors should watch their words.

The latter isn't just about your personal reaction: it's a moral/legal issue. If you're right that overly-convincing fiction demonstrates pathological tendencies in the writer (and not just in their characters), then authors who write with too much believability about illegal acts need to be monitored, for everyone's safety. And other authors should watch their words.

None of that is up to me. I am not going to pretend I don't believe X just because the likely consequences of X (if everyone else believed it to) are Y. That isn't my concern. I am just saying what I think.

*too

There is plenty in the book to undermine Humbert's view of himself but nothing inside the book that undermines his view of Lolita.

I think there are several little moments, but they're all really subtle because he can't portray her as a damaged and human child without his whole delusions of romantic love and fate and myth crashing down.

• the bit where he admits that she cries every night when he pretends to go to sleep
• when he overhears her tell her friend 'what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own', and he realizes how he know absolutely nothing about her, or how she thinks or feels
• when he sees the look on her face while she's watching a friend with her father, knowing she has no real family of her own
• something at Elphinstone (?) where he hears schoolchildren, while searching for Lolita, and realises the tragedy isn't that she's not with him, but that she's not in some school having a normal childhood (may have misremembered this)

But it's just a few little bits. On the whole, Humbert does completely dominate the portrayal of Lolita: everything she says and does is reported via his completely-biased perspective. I think there's just enough given to suggest that we don't know her any better than he does.

Thank you for pointing those out matcha. I'd say that his view of her sexuality goes unchallenged though?

I don't know about unchallenged, LittleMissMarker, but after a while it becomes so obviously inconsistent that you can't help but doubt his description. Humbert portrays her as completely oblivious and innocent, but also an outright temptress; as knowing instigator but also wincing injured victim; as sexually advanced and provocative (especially when he thinks other men are looking at her), but also completely uninterested and unresponsive to sex. Eventually you start to notice that whatever suits Humbert's narrative at that moment - that's what she suddenly is.

Eventually you start to notice that whatever suits Humbert's narrative at that moment - that's what she suddenly is.

Mm, I hadn't seen it that way before.

I think a lot of people are forgetting the part in the final chapter when HH is looking out over the town and hearing the noise of children playing far away and regretting that Lolita is not among them. I think he might genuinely feel regrets in that moment. Or not! Perhaps it's just a ploy to make him look better at the trial.

"I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background,and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord."

LittleMissMarker, the thing which really pisses me off about my copy of Lolita is that all that subtlety is totally destroyed by the cover picture (a soft-focus picture from the second movie) and text, which says:

'The greatest novel of rapture in modern fiction. Witty, sensuous and profound, Nabakov's story of a middle-aged college professor's passion for a honey-skinned pubescent girl is one of the most evocative depictions of unrequited love in the language.'

I mean.. what the fuck? How much harder does it get to read all the unreliable narrator and tiny detail aspects of the text, when you've got this absolute bilge framing it? You're led to expect this is some sexy controversial love story. Don't even get me started on:

'Passion' being used to describe sexual obsession and eventually a sexual relationship where one party is legally unable to consent, plus is absolutely dependent on the other (and fears being sent to an orphanage or boarding school)?

Lolita's description being purely physical. Because that's all she is. Humbert's manages to mention he's a college professor (which I don't think is even accurate, at first: I thought he was a silent partner in a perfume company, recently institutionalised and trying to write a book when he meets her).

'Unrequited love'? Fuck off! See 'passion'. Who even wrote this? Did they read the book?

I'm not surprised Lolita pisses people off, in this context, and gets the reputation of being a one-note indulgence of male fantasy. If I hadn't read the book, I'd hate it from this description. Even when I did, it took me a couple of rereads to understand how absolutely crap this summary is.

[disclaimer: I do hate all lazy book jackets which don't accurately depict the book. But this is a particularly bad example]