false 7604 145 Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of <I>Lolita</I> are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.<p> Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. <I>Lolita</I> is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion: <blockquote> She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock. </blockquote> Much has been made of <I>Lolita</I> as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic <I>jouissance</I> is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. <I>--Simon Leake</I> 1268631 book 1958 Lolita (Penguin Modern Classics) total:70652|5:27115|4:21517|3:14282|2:4903|1:2835| 70652 277130 102652 4043 3 58 false false Sat Dec 01 03:06:47 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 01 04:44:38 -0800 2007
When people talk about this book, they say things like it will "change the way you think" or that it's disquieting because it makes the reader sympathize with a pedophile. I thought wow, that much be worth reading.

Now I wo...more...]]> 2 52 false false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 01 18:30:22 -0700 2008 Sun May 04 07:59:05 -0700 2008 I’m not quite sure how to put this in words. Hell, I’m not sure what I intend to say, so this is going to be ugly. If you want to sit in on this exercise be my guest, you’ve probably got more important things to do, such as orga...more...]]> 5 37 false false Thu Jul 12 17:42:07 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 12 19:37:00 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 36 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Mar 06 13:27:16 -0800 2007 Tue Mar 13 12:55:20 -0700 2007
Nabokov was a man obsessed with word games and this book is crammed cover to cover with many brilliant examples....more...]]> 5 21 false false Sat Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2005 Sun Nov 11 08:41:30 -0800 2007 Thu Nov 15 05:20:04 -0800 2007 On The Road (it was published in 1955, two years before Kerouac’s breakout book). Humbert Humbert and Sal Paradise travel some of the same roads, around the same time, but rather than some holy quest through sanctified towns in search of enlightenme...more...]]> 5 20 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sat Jun 30 20:22:51 -0700 2007 Sat Jun 30 20:23:42 -0700 2007
As everyone says - its gorgeously written. The language is so rich that it somehow spills over the sentences - there's more to them than you can easily ingest. The writing makes the whole thing a pleasure to read, and in a lot of ways puts...more...]]> 3 24 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1991 Fri Aug 10 13:31:55 -0700 2007 Fri Jan 16 15:01:08 -0800 2009 (Legend of a Licentious Logophile)

1. Libidinous linguist lusts after landlady's lass.
2. Lecherous lodger weds lovelorn landlady.
3. Landlady loses life.
4. Lascivious lewd looks after little Lolita.
5. Lubricious Lolita loves licking l...more...]]> 5 18 false true Thu Mar 13 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 08 21:36:50 -0800 2008 Fri Mar 14 11:41:30 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 16 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1996 Thu Nov 20 03:36:04 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 05 13:27:15 -0800 2009 3 Look at the Harlequins...more...]]> 5 11 false false Sat Sep 08 07:16:56 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 11 23:14:13 -0700 2007 thing that danced l...more...]]> 5 14 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Tue Jul 31 17:39:32 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 31 17:53:33 -0700 2007
She contended that it was about a child molestor and w...more...]]> 3 9 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 22 21:07:08 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 22 21:48:23 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 11 false false Thu Jun 26 19:15:44 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 18 12:13:13 -0700 2008 lolita didn't mean in the book what it has come to mean in the titles on dozens cheap porn flicks or one handed reading books.

This is a book that does require some work. If you take it up as a pleasan...more...]]> 5 7 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Mon Jul 16 02:57:43 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 17 05:33:39 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 8 false false Fri Oct 03 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 16 11:46:05 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 03 13:49:26 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 6 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 26 06:43:48 -0700 2007 Wed Dec 19 18:29:10 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 6 false false Mon Jul 09 14:00:50 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 09 14:08:51 -0700 2007 Lolita until my mid-thirties, and I'm glad it took so long, because it let me appreciate the novel more for what it actually is -- not just a salacious tale of underage love (although it's that too), but also a darkly funny look at the then-new world of the ...more...]]> 5 8 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 1998 Thu Sep 06 12:24:57 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 30 23:36:38 -0700 2009
...more...]]> 5 7 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sat Sep 29 10:48:22 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 29 10:52:58 -0700 2007 ]]> 5 5 false false Fri Dec 05 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Sep 29 01:38:25 -0700 2008 Sat Apr 11 23:27:27 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=7606