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.

Goes back to 2014, but there are ongoing tensions, I think. All deeply weird.

Ah yes. There’s been a more recent one involving a rather unpleasant chap, who had a tantrum rather publicly

Re: it’s purpose, much is fundraising for the museum.

Yes, I get the impression that (seeing the society as an offshoot of the museum's PR and fundraising) is a big part of the ongoing dispute.

The ever controversial “direction” is always the crux!

Lolita is one of my favourite books.

It is in no way a justification of paedophilia. It does an excellent job of outlining how a child of that age thinks they are so mature, but of course they're still a child. Emotionally and sexually. She's in no way 'horrible' as is sometimes said - she's just a normal kid, a lost child with an inadequate mother at first and then no mother at all, trying to survive in a brutal misogynist world.

Humbert destroys her and reinvents her as 'his' Lolita. He doesn't see her as a human being in the real sense. Narcissism is throw around on Mumsnet a lot but if ever there was a bona fide narcissist it is Humbert.

It is painful but worth it. The book helped me to understand why so many people feel guilty about surviving various types of abuse, how children who are abused feel like it's their fault - whereas in my position as reader, I could see with perfect clarity it was not Lolita's fault. At all.

I wept for Lolita.

Art doesn't owe you a happy ending or reassurance or a sense of hope. It doesn't exist to make you feel good or give you the warm fuzzies.

find Nabokov's portrayal of one 'convincing' is fucking cretinous, when I have explained what I mean by the word. '

'cretinous'? did pengwyn seriously use that word to describe something

Brilliant post AbsentMindedWomen 👏👏👏

Art doesn't owe you a happy ending or reassurance or a sense of hope. It doesn't exist to make you feel good or give you the warm fuzzies

Excellent post

I don't think Lo is unpleasant at all. She's an abused child, trying desperately to survive as an orphan who has only her rapist stepfather to turn to.

'Interesting username OP.'

I've been on MN for 14 years. Report me if it would make you feel better 🙄

Oh I see, you are thinking of the Electra complex? I can assure you this is coincidence.

I read it only recently after hearing about it on Mumsnet.

It brought back memories. Lot of memories. It felt a bit like my own memories but retold by abusers, even though the facts were completely different...and yet it wasn’t jarring, it was sympathetic to the abused child in the way it so clearly and unapologetically portrays HH as an abuser.

I’m still not sure how to compartmentalise it in my head to be honest. I admit I found myself wondering, did he have some experience of this stuff in order to write it? If so, surely as a victim? Perhaps he himself was abused?

Very eery book. I have no literary education at all, but for what it’s worth I found the writing brilliant.

Also the thing some people are saying about the speed of it. The beginning is the identification of the victim, the ‘seduction’ or opportunism, and then begins the long slow descent into the tarry pit... no abuser / abused dynamic can be a relationship, it has no life or balance to it it’s just a long slow awfulness. The slow drag towards the end represents the way you can’t escape abuse, it fills you up with heaviness like you can’t breathe. At the end you just want the book to END, you want to be able to LEAVE it, like abuse victims want to but can’t.

Sorry. Terribly long post.

Short version: good book. Difficult subject matter.

One thing that I understood only after re-reading the novel after 30 is that Humbert was routinely physically violent towards his first wife (Valerie?). Mentioned throughout the novel, but I did not notice it on the first read (I think in early 20s).

TheCag, I have the same feeling about Crime and Punishment. I threw it across the room once. I love it, but it is indeed greatly disturbing.

Well he won a nobel prize. It ain't no fifty shades of grey, that's for sure

YANBU

Yes Craxmum - I noticed that too. He thinks it's a normal thing to say but it adds even more weight to the reality that he's a nasty, abusive shit.

It's one of my favourite books of all time. I haven't read it for about 10 years, but I really remember part where I think Humbert is listening to half a conversation on the telephone. I remember discussing it in a tutorial, and the tutor suggesting that that scene is key to the novel, we are only hearing half of the story, and it's the half controlled by the abuser.

I agree with others who say the first half was much better than the second, and the storyline with Quilty was a bit contrived.

Reading it in my early 20s, I identified with Lolita, imagining myself in the role of a feisty orphan. I wonder what my views would be now, reading it as a parent. I mean, even in my 20s, I realised that Humbert is an abuser, but I think I would feel it even more harshly as an adult who fully understands that children should always be children, and can only be victims in this sort of situation.

'I have never said it shouldn't exist or that it should be banned but it's an ugly work propping up the endless male perspective that passes for reality in art and culture. Young girls have been prostituted and married off since time began but their stories are not told and lauded in the mainstream. So I don't find Lolita revolutionary or interesting, I just see it as a dreary continuation; more of the same dressed up in pretty words.'

I think I can finally see where you are coming from. You feel that the abused party is the voice that we should hear - that is the narrative that we should be engaged with especially in a society where the power balance is in favour of men?

And yes, I do see your point but I also think that sometimes when the story is told from the POV of the victim that can be quite gratuitous and voyeuristic.

Its interesting there are no 'classics' from the opposite perspective. Older woman and male child.

Zoë Heller Notes on a Scandal

Bernhard Schlink The Reader.

Classics?!

It's clearly not a Lolita-style classic, but Notes on a Scandal is (in part) about an older woman who abuses her teenage male student, and my memory is that it was worth reading but also quite disturbing (not purely due to the abusive teacher-student relationship). It wasn't a book that stuck with me and haunted me like Lolita - but few are.