No plot
summary needed because I think most people are well acquainted with this
particular story. I read this book as my choice for the “Banned or Censored
Classic” for the 2016 Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at
the blog Books and Chocolate. This book was banned in the UK
and in France, in the late 1950s although it was eventually
published in both countries. I can’t find any Internet evidence, however, that
it was banned in the U.S. at all which really surprised me, given that Forever
Amber was banned less than 10 years earlier and having read both, I would
say that Lolita is more explicit and much, much more disturbing.
I read Reading
Lolita in Teheran a few years ago. Probably mostly because the title
alludes to it, but I specifically recall Azar Nafisi’s
deconstruction of this novel. In particular she elucidated on how
Humbert Humbert not only physically imprisons Delores, but how he denies her
her own existence outside of himself figuratively and metaphorically as well.
This is something I thought a lot about as I read Lolita.
I know
that Nabokov is revered for his writing but I wasn’t really able to appreciate
it as such. I realize there is a lot that I missed; references to other works,
etc. But even if I could unequivocally state that this was the best written
novel ever, it is, in my opinion, a very unpleasant story and no amount of Humbert
Humbert's charm can deflect from that. There are a few books that I
have read where I am sure that I would have appreciated them more when I was
younger, but this is a book that I am glad I read when I was older and somewhat
wiser. I don’t know if I would have been able to see past some of the
roadblocks that Humbert puts up had I been a younger and more naïve reader.
I don’t know
what Nabokov’s intent was when writing this book, but clearly publishers and
the public at large have also been seduced by Humbert Humbert. Just look at the
freaking cover art for most of the editions of it (thankfully mine published by
Everyman’s Library only has a photo of the author); why is Delores objectified
again and again? Why do we use the term culturally “Lolita” to mean a
“nymphette” as defined by Humbert? These facts are as disturbing as the book
itself.
