How nice that
Lolita is the book of the month for December. As I mentioned in my Playboy thread, the Dec. issue of Playboy has put together 13 authors and artists to explain why the novel still resonates after 50 years.
(And on Wednesday (12/7/05), On Jeopardy! The Final "Answer" was, "the 1955 novel originally titled 'kingdom by the sea' which alludes to Edgar Allan Poe's 'Annabel Lee'")
SFG: Nabokov loathed Freud and his psychoanalytic views
It's apparent when the headmistress diagnoses Lolita as being sexually immature (as one example).
Peder:Would the women here in the forum wish that some man, or woman, might say that to them?
:sigh:
SFG: Was H.H. a pedophile or a hebephile?
I don't believe he was either. I don't really believe it was little girls he loved. I believe it was just Lolita.
Shade:
I don't see this, though that may just make me morally degenerate. Am I the only person who finds an amount of (toe-curling) humour in Humbert's attempts to spy on Lolita, like a reversal of an adolescent boy watching the grown woman in the apartment across the road?
Yes! Humor! Exactly! That is something that readers tend to miss when reading this novel. They tend to be stuck on it's "pornographic" content.
Nabokov speaks scornfull of those who attempt to read Lolita for its pornographic potential. -Joyce Carol Oats
SFG: The immaturity is there, no doubt about it. Her statement that you mentioned, coupled with others in which she calls H.H. a dirty old man make you wonder as he did-as to whether or not she is joking or being serious.
Probably a little bit of both. When my best friend and I were 17, she dated someone a little older (17 is legal in TX by the way)... and would call him a pervert all the time. He smiled. But sometimes wondered - you could tell by the way his smile would falter. We were very playful-or immature if you'd like to call it that. But we knew what we were doing. She knew, and she knew it would make him think.
SFG:If you have to terrorize the poor thing, it doesn't sound like a willing relationship
Well, no one says it's a willing relationship. He was doing what he could to keep her afterall.
Peder: that it was less graphic than they might think, and not at all 'explicit.' And certainly not pornographic.
That's how I felt reading it for the first time. I didn't find it at all pornographic. Hot at times, definitely... but otherwise very humorous and beautifully written.
Peder:Right here, it seems to me that Nabokov has taken quite believable fantasies of a young, newly adolescent boy and transcribed them directly into the thinking and feelings of an older pedophile male Humbert. I don't know anything about how pedophiles think, and in fact they seem incomprehensible to me -- not to mention entirely reprehensible -- but my recollection is that Nabokov reportedly researched pedophile case histories and maybe this is what he really found out about how they tick. Dunno.
I don't think it's that hard to write about loving a young girl. I mean, how many men want their wife to be a virgin on their wedding night? Why is that? They want someone innocent. Someone fresh and unknowing. Untouched. Someone that they can "teach"... those are the same characteristics as that of a child. Many men treat their women as though they (the men) were their father.
Peder: But despite all, the book was never actually banned in any legal sense. The publishers of the time just didn't want to go near it
I showed the manuscript to Ken McCormick, Doubleday's chief editor at the time, without revealing the author's name. He liked it as much as I did but was worried. So was I. Doubleday had just spent thousands of dollars defending Wilson' own rather steamy novel Memoirs of Hecate County, only to lose in the Supreme Court. -Jason Epstein, Nabokov's Editor and Publisher (Playboy, Dec. 2005 issue)
It was later published by Putnam.
MonkeyCatcher: I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. I think it was the way in which Lolita played him and toyed with his weakness that made me pity him.
I felt the same way. We always think about
men being the ones in control of sexual relationships..
men exploiting women... but that would mean women are idiots. They know what powers their sex holds... what they can do with it... and how to get what they want with it.
MonkeyCatcher:I'm stilling tossing up weither Lolita was consenual or not.
There's that phrase, "consenting adults"... minors may be consenting, but since they're minors, it's rape. What's rape? Unwanted/nonconsenting sexual advances. So...it's not that easy to say. I'd say she consented (IMO). Like I said earlier about sexual powers... exploiting...
I'd like to take the time as say, I'm trying to catch up on all the posts. But it's late, I haven't slept... and I'm really just skimming. So I may be saying things that have already been said. I may say things that are not clear. I apologize.
Also, I read Lolita for the first time (and the last) 3 years ago. I do plan on rereading it (over and over and over again)... but have yet to buy a new copy (I gave mine to my sister who lives out of state). As I've said in other threads. The book I had of Lolita was the Annotated Lolita. Excellent book. Many may think it unnecessary, but I loved it. I'm so glad it included Poe's "Annabel Lee" (which happens to be my favorite poem - from the first time I heard it when I was 6).
My first "lolita" experience was the 1997 Lyne movie. I found incredible sympathy for Humbert. I hated Lolita. I thought she was insufferable and manipulative (I was 15 or so when I first saw this movie). And I didn't view Humbert as a pervert or a pedaphile. I just thought of him as a man in love.. in love with someone who happened to be a young girl.
Then when I read the book 5 years later (ugh. why did it take me so long?) I read the scene where Humbert has Lolita "pleasure" him while he stares at other young girls. It made me question his "love".
The opinions and statements I have/make may be off a bit because I've watched the movie(1997; which I loved - much better thant he kubrick version, even though Nabokov wrote the screenplay) more than I've read the book (I'm ashamed to say)...
StillILearn: I called the twelve year-old Lolita a brat, and she was, but what else might one expect from a child who had Charlotte for a mother?
Yes, Lo obviously wasn't raised with respect for authority figures. I'm sure she just viewed them as a source to getting what she wanted/needed (food, shelter, etc...) and learned to manipulate them to do so. It was obvious who was in control when it came down to Lo and Charlotte.
SFG: The couch scene is one where he is just beside himself, while she obviously doesn't "get" what she's doing to him.
You really think she didn't understand what she was doing? She's a sly one afterall... I'm sure she knew.
SFG: she states that she is feeling somewhat romantic and wants H.H. to carry her upstairs to their room. Contrast that with H.H. talking with the school staff about Lo's lack of desire for dating or being social.
Ahh.. but the school, the headmistress has it all wrong. That's Nabokov's slap in the face towards psychiatry - emotional, mental diagnosis.
So I do not think her personality is "very split."
Lolita's side of the story? Has anyone read
Lo's Diary by Pia Pera?
Pontalba: Yup, agreed, although Melanie Griffith (sp?) was good, but Shelley Winters was more on the squarish build, and soooo superficially repressed along with it.
I thought M. Griffith did a good job at looking incredibly pathetic and oblivious.
StillILearn: What on earth do you think made Lolita actually fall in love with the creepy Quilty?
I agree with MonkeyCatcher on that. I'm sure she was more star struck than in love. And she found a way out of the situation she was growing tired of being in.
:whew: Libra tired.
Links:
Lo's Diary
The Annotated Lolita
Playboy Thread
