fiction files redux discussion

Am I blind, or do we really not have a Nabokov thread?

I just finished reading Lolita for the first time. I looked back through the old FF, and I was surpized to see that no conversations had ever really gotten off the ground about this book. It's not my first Nabokov, and as far as breathtaking sentences go, I don't think it's his best. But it does seem to be haunting me. I've had a couple of dreams about it. In one, I "solved" the "puzzle." Please don't ask me what that means, it was a dream, and I don't remember much. But it's that sort of hauntingness that I think people are talking about when they talk about the effect of Nabokov's writing.

So anyway, I don't know what to say about Lolita. It does seem like people have a hard time talking about it, and I'm not sure why. We aren't so prude that it can be chalked up to the subject matter. (can it?)

I was surpsized that it's a road trip novel. One thing I can say is that the author has captured the American Motel perfectly. It's amazing how little they've changed since he wrote this novel.

I've tried my hardest (really I have) to appreciate Nabokov and I just cannot. Something gnaws at my brain when I read Vlad Nab. As I said, I've tried...read Pale Fire and Despair. But he leaves me cold. I got a big laugh from Michel Houllebecq's description of Nabokov's prose as a 'pale imitator of Joyce' and comparing his work to a 'collapsed pastry'. I'm not entirely in agreement, but it's a funny observation.

Sorry this isn't about Lolita!

Yeah, I read his Lolita and liked the beginning, but in the middle, it kind of sagged and I got bored with author's descriptions of Lolita. It's funny how after a man have his way with a girl or a woman he pursit, he doesn't want her afterward.

Haven't read Lolita, unfortunately. I read Pale Fire (well, except for much of the poem--the rest I thought was great, captivating, etc. And definitely smart. Psychotic, yes.)

Martyn wrote: "I've tried my hardest (really I have) to appreciate Nabokov and I just cannot. Something gnaws at my brain when I read Vlad Nab. As I said, I've tried...read Pale Fire and Despair. But he leaves me cold. I got a big laugh from Michel Houllebecq's description of Nabokov's prose as a 'pale imitator of Joyce' and comparing his work to a 'collapsed pastry'. I'm not entirely in agreement, but it's a funny observation."
Nabokov actually didn't think much of Ulysses. I remember reading an interview in which he said that he couldn't be bothered to finish it. Maybe I'm confusing him with somebody else. I dunno... I think Nabokov's just a trickster. Though it amuses me when people go on about how disgusting Lolita is.

Andreea wrote: "Martyn wrote: "I've tried my hardest (really I have) to appreciate Nabokov and I just cannot. Something gnaws at my brain when I read Vlad Nab. As I said, I've tried...read Pale Fire and Despair. B..."

I think it was Finnegans Wake he didn't care for.

Andreea wrote: " it amuses me when people go on about how disgusting Lolita is.

But do they go on about how disgusting it is? My experience has been people mostly gushing about it, but struggling to talk about it (and I'm assuming that isn't because of the content. How could it be? It's so mild compared to what we are used to these days.)People generally say things like "his sentences are amazing!" and they are amazing, but that seems to be the end of the conversation.

Personally, I really like his style, but I have no idea why. It seems to do something like music, except it isn't music.

As for the story itself, it's ok, as stories go. I don't honestly find HH all that compelling, and Lolita is just plan flat. But his descriptions of hotel rooms and roadside attractions, Oh!

Wasn't Nabokov a trained musician? Maybe I'm confusing him with someone else. I do agree with the music of his word choice. Read it aloud -- sounds like poetry.

I wrote about this book, but who knows how long ago it was.

I read Lolita for the first time in college when I was 19. Our professor deliberately had us stop just before the abuse began and discuss the first portion of the book.

I remember not "getting it" until it was explained to me because -- I guess -- it had never occurred to me that someone would write a book that looks at, or uses as a device (or however you want to put it) pedophilia from the point of the view of the abuser.

Even though American Psycho came out around that time.

I read it again a couple of years ago, mostly from a writerly perspective, which is very different from the ethical one that will step in at some point -- I think it just will, and the book pushes and pulls at those strings on purpose.

Maybe I did it that way because I have a ten-year-old daughter. That really puts a different spin on things. Even looking at it as a work of "literatuah" I could not eliminate how sick the abuse scenes made me feel. Just - sick. Because I know how my daughter is as a child, now, and have the barest sense of what the taking of that innocence would mean.

Patty wrote: "Andreea wrote: " it amuses me when people go on about how disgusting Lolita is.

But do they go on about how disgusting it is? My experience has been people mostly gushing about it, but struggling..."
I've heard a lot of young innocent lit students say that, although the writing style is pretty, pedophilia is very very wrong and they felt ashamed of reading it in public most of the time because it was just that creepy and wrong. I had no problem with the abuse bits. They're just words, sentences, chapters in a book and you shouldn't feel obliged to get yourself emotionally invested in them. -shrug- Might be because I had read (and loved) Death in Venice -which is perhaps just as full of pedophilia- a short while before Lolita.

Yeah, Nabo was a huge fan of Joyce, liked Ulysses, it was FW that he called a rubbish.
Now, this guy said he and Borges had a mental link, disliked Dostoievisky with violence,had a great sense of humor, and really... Lolita is great.

Awww, I thought this thread was about that crib named "Lolita" that got pulled from the market.

Well, some of these covers just look smutty to me! I had to print them out for a thorough inspection.

Covering Lolita

Patrick wrote: "Yeah, I read his Lolita and liked the beginning, but in the middle, it kind of sagged and I got bored with author's descriptions of Lolita. It's funny how after a man have his way with a girl or a ..."

I agree with that assessment...the beginning of "Lolita" blew my mind with how precise and elegant the language is, but then it just went out of hand right around the part where she runs away from Humbert...suddenly I wasn't interested and I felt like Nabokov was just screwing with me...as if he were trying to convince me to root for Humbert to find Lolita again (which may have been what he was after). And the ending was totally unsatisfactory.

I've also read "Pale Fire," which I think was his best work, but still isn't up to the hype that people place on it. I couldn't believe some of the reviews I saw for it after I had read the whole thing. Having said that, I thought it was extremely clever in the concept of an editor essentially taking over something that should have belonged to the author and the different dualities that Nabokov presents throughout the story.

Sometimes I think that he's at his best in his book of criticism, "Strong Opinions" because he finally stops playing the games that always annoy me when I read his stuff and shows us something real.

One of Nabokov's more attractive qualities is his responsiveness to the pop culture & trivia of his time. The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated reveals his consumption of movies, advertisements, comic strips, big band songs, etc. Although he regarded some of this material as vulgar junk, he never denied the fun & vitality that might be found in it. And who could have imagined that such a mandarin figure was an admirer of Lenny Bruce? (The book also contains a robe ad, whose male model gives us an idea of how Nabokov may have visualized Humbert, along with his sketch of an obscure comic strip character whose name he couldn't recall.)

The second volume of Brian Boyd's biography gives a few examples of Nabokov's impish sense of humor, often at the expense of his stuffy academic colleagues. One time he reduced a professor to an uncomfortable silence simply by asking him if he had been watching a popular soap opera.

Adrian wrote: "The book also contains a robe ad, whose male model gives us an idea of how Nabokov may have visualized Humbert..."

This is a late response to the lurker who asked me if I could scan & post the advertisement from The Annotated Lolita. I found a color scan online (see below). The scene occurs near the end of chapter 16, Part One. Mother and daughter are out of the house, so Humbert explores Lolita's bedroom. He discovers that she has taped over her a bed a magazine ad that features a man, wearing a fashionable robe of the period, who is carrying a breakfast tray to serve his "bride." The narrator Humbert comments: "Lo had drawn a jocose arrow to the haggard lover's face and had put, in block letters: H. H. And indeed, despite a difference of a few years, the resemblance was striking."



The page from The Annotated Lolita can be found here. If you magnify the image, you can read the advertising copy printed beneath it, which opens with the lyrics from a Handel oratorio. A further irony is that Lolita has placed the ad directly above a photo of Quilty, who will later be vanquished by Humbert (the "conquering hero" of the ad).

I think the model resembles a young James Mason, so I'm wondering if that could have influenced the casting of Kubrick's film.

And I wish some of you lurkers would participate in the group.

THey would not be lurkers otherwise, wouldnt then?

Anyways, I always find impossible to agree that the final of Lolita telis weaker in any sense. It is pretty much only final possible, the one that is predictable, annouced: The narrators starts telling us that Lolita is lost.
The way the degradation of HH also follows his degradation of speech, how he lost his charm, his lies became clear are all perfect. HH lost the capacity to tell a lie because that was when the game ends. Losing Lolita was his crime, not the rest. That is what he could not accept as he can never accept the losing of any young girl. Deaths, kidnapping are not up for his moral. Had Nabokov keep the tale of the enchanting pedophile, he would then be playing on HH, turning him in a anti-hero, not just in a monster that destroyed a family... The final is exactly when the disguise is harder to believe, when you feel bad reading it, it is perfection: HH is losing it.

Jcamilo wrote: "THey would not be lurkers otherwise, wouldnt then?..."

And they can stop sending smutty e-mail requests for photos of me in my underwear. This isn't a hoochie-coochie club!

Hi, Diana. :P

Yeah, asking for photos is so outdate, just give them the link to the site where you would upload it and all will be easier :)