Lolita in LDR Summertime Sadness Reading List 2020

Feb 17, 2025 Jared Woods rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

How classic can a classic book be? When Stanley Kubrick adapts it into a film? When Lana Del Rey writes a song about it? When its title enters the English lexicon to describe a seductive underage girl? Oh, God, what have we done?

If I've learned one truth about controversial creative works, you can get away with a lot under the protection of artistic merit. Undoubtedly, if Lolita were a poorly written exercise in smut, they would've bashed Vladimir Nabokov's door down, combing through his wastebi How classic can a classic book be? When Stanley Kubrick adapts it into a film? When Lana Del Rey writes a song about it? When its title enters the English lexicon to describe a seductive underage girl? Oh, God, what have we done?

If I've learned one truth about controversial creative works, you can get away with a lot under the protection of artistic merit. Undoubtedly, if Lolita were a poorly written exercise in smut, they would've bashed Vladimir Nabokov's door down, combing through his wastebins for evidence of abusive behaviours. But, of course, Lolita evades scrutiny by spinning melodious literary circles around even the most acclaimed of novels. Every line—and I mean Every. Single. Line.—dies from their criminal yearnings so tense that they work themselves into knots. The vivid descriptions were hallucinatory. The pages smelt of this young girl's flowery scent. I could taste the desperation of this man's lust dribbling from each of his carefully placed commas. All of which evoked awful confusion. Yes, I adore the prose, but I am unsure I want this paedophilia poetry inside my head. It's so good, and that's maybe not so good.

Nevertheless, the creamy mastery of language coupled with the immoral themes were so extravagant that they successfully hid this book's singular tiny flaw: the protagonist, Humbert, is more or less a one-dimensional character. His romantic delusion and intellectual self-awareness revolve exclusively around Lolita. She is his sexual obsession to the point of madness, and while the story makes several small sidesteps from that core plotline, there isn't too much else to his identity. In actuality, Lolita boasted greater depth than he. This barely noticeable blemish does not detract from the work's perfection but prevents the narrator from sinking his dirty claws deeper into my brain. I am reminded of American Psycho, for example. Although a shallow personality, Patrick Bateman was also so generously layered with nuance that it took me weeks to detach the guy from my thoughts. Meanwhile, Humbert's musings may have decorated my internal monologue, but that full synchronisation was never realised. Then again, upon further reflection, that's probably for the best.

In the end, I've never read anything as brilliant as Lolita. I have contemplated challengers, but no title comes to mind. Consequently, my own writing has withered, bowing to Nabokov in submission. Novels like these are imperative for us authors to hone our craft, but the subsequent inferiority complex period is excruciating. Still, at least I'm not raping children, so that's a win. ...more

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