Should I read Lolita?

[PotteringPondering]

I’m wondering whether I should read Nabokov’s Lolita. I’ve heard people say it’s a classic, and well written. I also know it’s about an older man who becomes obsessive about a 12-year-old girl. But that’s all I know about it.

I’m not keen to immerse myself in the mindset of a creepy paedophile. Or does the book give some sort of framing/distancing, so the reader isn’t led to sympathise with that character?

Happy to be persuaded on this.

'I don't want to live in a world where art has to affirm its Upright Moral Correctness at every turn and a narrator can never do anything bad without Learning A Lesson and Recognising His Failings.'

I agree. Art is not propaganda. When art is used to proselytise (whether it's cheesy evangelistic novels, or onward-to-glorious-future Marxist cinema), it's usually bad art. The best art is curious and allusive, it has moral ambiguity.

That's not what I'm questioning.

A better comparison is the bodycam footage of Hamas killing and brutalising people. My son went to an IDF screening and watched it all. I've been wondering how I'd respond if I were invited. I'm not sure I want to see the world through the eyes of somebody who rapes and shoots a woman, beheads a man with a garden tool, and cooks a baby in an oven.

In a similar way, I was asking how viscerally Lolita invites you into the mindset of somebody who wants to have sex with a 12-year-old. How that issue is presented might affect whether I want to read the book or not.

There's no 'should' about it, if you want to read it, do so and if not, don't.

I've read it twice, once as a youngster when the book was passed around my class at school, and once as an adult. When young I was fascinated and, as an adult, somewhat repulsed. It is creepy and written from the point of view of the man, Humber Humbert, but it's well written and interesting (though I'm not sure I would find it interesting now).

It's up to you but you could try. Start reading and if it gets too much, just stop. The subject is distasteful but there is nothing gory, no torture or the like. My tolerance levels are quite low so I could not have got into reading anything of that nature.

You could try finding and watching the film or both films, the first with James Mason and Sue Lyon, the second with Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain. They must be available on the internet somewhere. I found James Mason as Humber Humbert more chilling but cannot remember how true to the book either film was. Here are the details about the Jeremy Irons version from IMDb, it's quite comprehensive and will give you a better idea of what it's about: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119558/plotsummary/

You are seeing Lolita through Humbert's eyes, and you are able to understand his thinking and motivations - and he is also funny, observant and quite intelligent. But, despite all this, even through this distorted lens you are still able to see the situation as it is - and you feel incredibly sorry for Lolita. The most shocking and sad part for me is that Humbert himself understands what he is doing is hurting the girl, he cares for her (loves her, I guess?) and a lot of what he says shows he even feels sorry for her - but its like his lust is more powerful than any guilt or compassion he feels. He is quite revolting, really. But the book is amazing.

It's a great piece of literature because Nabokov knows most people would be repulsed by child abuse, so he deliberately sets it on the edge of 'acceptability' by making the child a bit older (Humbert, the protagonist is a hebephile), so as a reader you're going against your own better judgement by continuing to read. Then you gradually find yourself following Humbert to the point where you feel sorry for him by the end, because his obsession means he's ruined her life and his own.

Its subtle manipulation of its readers is why it's a great piece of writing, and its also a brilliant example of how grooming works, as that's what's happened to the reader.

I don't think any film versions of Lolita work particularly well, I haven't seen any filmmakers being able to produce the same subtle layered effect book has, they all rather blunt. Also, all the actresses I have seen playing Lolita are girls who look like young sexy women, which is kind of not what the story is about - but thanks God no one made Lolita with an actual 12 year old, that would be gross.

The book isn't graphic. And Lolita is not a real person.

I always thought Jodie Foster would have been ideal in the role. And she was 12 in Taxi Driver.

You can appeal to authority in lit-crit terms all you like but it’s a novel designed to turn you on about the seduction of a child. It’s 2023 not 1960 - texts don’t live in a vacuum.

It really isn't, if you are getting turned on by it there is something very wrong with you, not with the book.

Maybe - she is a great actress - but the whole idea that Lolita was sexually attractive only existed in Humbert's head, in reality she just an ordinary kid. I think the whole cultural thing of portraying her as a seductress is absolutely disguising and a total misunderstanding of a book.

I can't imagine being 'turned on' by the book. It is subtly creepy. The way Humber Humbert recounts the happenings in such a matter of fact way, as if it was normal, is quite chilling.

I first read it when I was 12 and was fascinated, did not feel the horror but of course I was too young to fully understand. It was the same for the other girls in my class at school who read it.

However, when I re-read the book as an adult I was quite unnerved, troubled even; the fear and distaste gradually built up as I went through the book.

Nevertheless, it is extremely well-written and seems to be an authentic but dramatised case study of someone with that particular perversion. I imagine it is valuable to people who work with perpetrators of sexual abuse and grooming of minors because it gives insight into the workings of their minds.

I was hoping he wouldn't succeed, but I agree it is a brilliant work of art. I'm not so sure about some of Alberto Moravia's short stories.

I haven’t read it, exactly because of the ‘anticipatory crawly skin’ but @SylvieLaufeydottir‘s post has made me want to. Thinking about it, I do find it harder to read fiction with a morally horrifying narrator / POV, for example John Fowles’ Collector or Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock so that’s a good thing to recognise.

I haven't read Lolita so am just reading this thread with interest.

The idea of wanting to go and watch a screening of real people being tortured and murdered is utterly incomprehensible to me.

Lolita is fiction. I like fiction that makes you think, which it sounds like this book does. I'm unsure if I would choose to read this subject matter though.

I know incredibly awful humanitarian atrocities are happening in Gaza. I believe the reports without wanting to inflict seeing it on myself - and I just don't understand the mindset of people who say we should bear witness to it all on video. It won't change a single thing apart from making the person who watched it feel sickened and probably be unable to remove those images from their brain. We are very lucky if we are not in the warzone that we do not have to see it with our own eyes, and I don't think the potential impact on mental health is taken seriously enough. And to what benefit? None, as far as I can see.

Reading not watching is more bearable to me, as is knowing something is fiction not real.

Just my thoughts - hope I don't derail this into too much discussion about Gaza, it's just musing in response to one of the OP's posts.

If it turns you on, then that’s on you, not on the novel.

Texts didn’t live in a vacuum in 1960, either - which you must know, given you presumably chose that date purposefully because it’s the year of the landmark trial against Penguin for obscenity for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover? Which Penguin won, of course.

Yes.

It is beautifully written. Nabokov composes with words, he doesn’t just string them together. I first read it when I was nineteen and all these years later phrases from the novel float into my head whenever it is mentioned because they are so perfectly crafted they are unforgettable.

It is not in the least graphic or salacious, although it is sad. It’s also funny. “They call those fries French, grand Dieu!” is a phrase that often springs to mind when contemplating a cardboard packet of soggy motorway station offerings.

Nor is it in any way an apologia for paedophilia. Humbert might think it is, but as witty, erudite and polished a narrator as he is, the reader is aware that he is wholly unreliable.

Despite Lolita being shown through the distorting lens of Humbert’s obsession it is obvious to the reader that she is just an ordinary child who should be leading a normal life and who, heartbreakingly, isn’t.

The fictional preface explicitly identifies Humbert, and his narrative, as a psychiatric case study. Of degeneracy. The narrative itself is his literary self-defence in a murder trial ("You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style... Ladies and gentlemen of the jury").

And you're not wholly seduced, are you? You feel the pull, and at the same time you're repulsed. That is how people have always responded to Lolita, and insofar as Nabokov's intentions "matter", that's clearly what he intended. Anyone who comes away from the novel thinking "I totally understand why Humbert did what he did, what a stand-up guy he is"... Well, that's on what they brought to the novel, not what's in there.

The sexual abuse of children and adolescents is now heavily tabooed enough that its existence in a novel like this, even as something directly criticised and obviously explorative, causes this kind of performative panic-rejection in people. "I would never, I am morally superior, so morally superior even discussion which criticises this topic is discussion I can't tolerate". You're taking a failure to condemn the novel as a condoning of the sexual abuse of minors, but do you see how very far you're leaping from one to the other?

Oh, and for what it's worth, I would also steer clear of film versions. I think the deeprootedness of male gaze in cinema mixes very badly with Humbert's own distorted gaze, and it would take a (female) filmmaker of rare sensitivity and skill to walk the line in film that Nabokov does in prose.

I typed 'exploitative', not 'explorative'. Shut up autocorrect. Can't edit a post that quotes.

Despite Lolita being shown through the distorting lens of Humbert’s obsession it is obvious to the reader that she is just an ordinary child who should be leading a normal life and who, heartbreakingly, isn’t.

What marks her out for Humbert is her close physical resemblance to his teenage sweetheart. All the girls he lusts after are of a similar age and physical type, but Lolita resembles her exceptionally.

The idea of wanting to go and watch a screening of real people being tortured and murdered is utterly incomprehensible to me.

The case of watching Hamas brutalise and celebrate their brutality is not something someone 'wants' to watch but a need for history to be seen in action just as images of the concentration camps were shown throughout the world in 1945.

Agree with this.

In The Father, Anthony Hopkins' character's confusion is put in screen in some interesting ways, including having multiple actors play the same character and different characters- (so his daughter is played by Olivia Coleman except sometimes she's played by Olivia Williams who also plays his care worker, and so on). I wonder whether a similar technique would work for a story like Lolita- switching between actresses to unsettle the audience, make us distrustful of what's on screen and whether we're seeing (fictional) reality or a twisted version of it. I think it needs something like that because the films so far have been frank failures and completely misrepresent the book.

She would have been wonderful, she would have made me love Lolita though (I've always really disliked the character) I first read it when I was 11 or 12 and have re-read it dozens of times. It's a great book.

That's another instance of the complexity and brilliance of the novel, IMO - the fact that Dolly/Lolita is often not particularly likeable. Which is entirely realistic for what she is - a child vulnerable to sexual exploitation, fatherless, hungry for attention and affection, living with a mother who doesn't like her very much. The vulnerabilities of the victims of child sexual exploitation are so often used to blame those same victims; real people don't conform to the bland saintly template of "victim".

In the West we certainly seem to be heading back to rating works of art in terms of morality and ethics, same as we used to during more religious times. Only now we're adding ratings for the artist's life and also political views. We're a much more censorious and puritanical society than we were fifty years ago. Possibly that zeitgeist is what's making you feel unsettled.