Humbert is a paedophile. He abuses Lolita.

[Anthony]

well, I apologize about your name. as to the rest, you are doing a great job of proving yourself as relevant as a passé phrase. punctuation Nazis, in my experience, have little else to occupy their minds.

here is a tip, stay away from Shakespeare and Faulkner, as they both relied heavily on made up words. oh, and no, I do not think I am the next Shakespeare or Faulkner.

[Laureen]

Anthony wrote: "well, I apologize about your name. as to the rest, you are doing a great job of proving yourself as relevant as a passé phrase. punctuation Nazis, in my experience, have little else to occupy their..."

OK, you are welcome to the last word, almost. I said I am not against "new" words - just don't interfere with the meanings of existing words. What I meant by "made up" words was something different, i.e. words that are merely "fashionable" and temporary. I feel the same about personal names derived from "fruit" or "vegetation" etc. Oh, I know, I am digging a deeper hole here. I'm done.

[Anthony]

I'll send you a walker:)

[Laureen]

I'll send you a rocket.

[Anthony]

I might ought to keep the walker....:)

[Esdaile]

My comment on how to define rape is that I define it according to the origin of the word, how it has been used down through time, how I understand it personally least of all according to a current interpretation. So my short answer to your question is no. Morality, as Nietzsche showed and has never to my mind been convincingly disproved, is a means used by one group to exercise power over others. Who is this "we" who used to think women should not vote or think they should now? It is the mob led by the purveyors of a morality in power at a given time. I have my own opinions and I will let them be changed by intelligent argument but not by the consensus of a church or media led mass. As far as women having the vote is concerned, it is not a big deal one way or another. Thinking it is absurdly inflates the signíficanc eof the individual voter. I decline to have my opinions formed according to a manipulated majority consensus, as in the current lowest common denominator system of counting mutton heads commonly called democracy. I would be quite happy to see the Reform Acts from 1832 onwards repealed. Democracy has become a racket manipulated by the media.

[Esdaile]

Anthony wrote: "well, I apologize about your name. as to the rest, you are doing a great job of proving yourself as relevant as a passé phrase. punctuation Nazis, in my experience, have little else to occupy their..."

What do you mean by the statement Shakespeare relied on made up words? He made up words, perhaps about ninety, but I do not think he relied on them and how could he rely on words which other people had made up? Can you give some examples? It has nothing much to do with the subject but I am intrigued.

[Esdaile]

Gary wrote: "Esdaile wrote: "There is a significant difference between HH's crime and that of robbing a bank, which does not have to be understood as exonerating him, but the distinction is deep. It is this. Cr..."

Interesting point. I think the one does not exclude the other. Let's take the example of an alcoholic. An alcoholic does not make a rational choice about becoming an alcoholic (at least I do not think so) but certainly will use all kinds of subterfuge and strategem, inlcuding lying and deceit to get at the bottle. An addict will use cunning plans and plot to obtain the thing to which he/she is addicted but there is no cunning plan involved in ebcoming an addict. This is more a matter of weakness or folly, not part of a plan. On the one hand you have cold caluclating plans to get money or the drug or the drink, on the other hand the addiiction is not a calculation but a compulsion which defies reason. This is the same for all kinds of sexual temptation whether legtimate in the eyes of society or not. They ultimately defy reason: the libido is a natural compulsion, which when unnaturally or abnormally directed may well be condemned (rightly or wrongly is another matter entirely) by the social consensus, but which is not coldly chosen. I do not think people say "I am going to be a drug addict/homosexual etc-let's see how I can be successful as one."

[Esdaile]

Iris wrote: "Scott brings up a great point. Humbert wanted Lolita specifically. He never went about kidnapping little girls in general. She sang to his soul. And nobody brings up Clare Quilty. He was a pervert ..."
A fair point.

[Esdaile]

Ingo wrote: "The first and only thought that cross my mind when I read the title of this discussion is "No shit Sherlock".
I'm sorry for the language.
Nah, not really.

I think the main focus of Lolita is on..."

Let me see if I have understood you correctly. Rape is the worst thing you can inflict on another human being and paedophilia is the worst crime.
Here are a few cases:
Paedophilia: imagine we are in Belfast circa 1975: a man puts his hands down a boy's shorts in the cinema. The same boy at home sees his father kneecapped by a Provo IRA punishment squad or his mother taken away to be tortured and killed as an informer. According to you the dirty old man in the cinema is guilty of a worse crime than the Provo IRA, right?
Rape: Russian soldiers who raped German women in 1944/45 committed a worse crime than the Argentinian fascists who tortured women to death so long as they didn't rape them? A husband who rapes his wife in Mexico is committing a worse crime than Mexican drug bandits who torture someone for days in ways too stomach churning to describe before killing them?
Is this what you believe?

[Gary]

Humbert does go after Lolita/Delores specifically, but he spends his entire adult (and pre-adult) life fantasizing about young girls. It runs as a theme throughout the book, but see in particular chapter 5 for the extent and elaboration of his perversion.

As for the specificity of kidnapping Lolita/Delores, I think we must also take into consideration one important factor: Humbert is a coward. The does target her, but only after marrying her mother, watching her mother die, picking her up from Camp Q (away from her home and contacts) and then taking her on an extended road trip way from the authorities and her familiar surroundings. Even after all that elaborate effort, he still wrings his hands over his actions, and works on her over the course of an extended period of time.

Edit: This kind of behavior is sometimes called "grooming" (in his treatment of Lolita/Delores) and also called "escalation" (his own actions) in more modern psychiatric terms.

That's a pretty extensive amount of circumstance and effort before he acts. Again, you have to find the hints and indications of this carefully hidden in the text, but Humbert is a deeply fearful man. His delusional version of himself is as the hero of a faerie tale, but that's all bluster to cover for his weakness.

Furthermore, the novel focuses on Lolita/Delores, because it is in the form of a confession/rationalization regarding the crime that he is incarcerated for. He mentions interacting with children in several ways (again, particularly chapter 5) but carefully shies away from a lot of detail. Very carefully. I'd suggest that care is pointed given the detailed nature of the rest of the narrative. Humbert's account is of his obsession with "his Lolita" but it's clear that he has had other obsessions, and this is just the one for which he was apprehended.

[Gary]

Esdaile wrote: "What do you mean by the statement Shakespeare relied on made up words? He made up words, perhaps about ninety, but I do not think he relied on them and how could he rely on words which other people had made up? Can you give some examples? It has nothing much to do with the subject but I am intrigued."

There was an odd trend in and around the time Shakespeare wrote. It was common for "gentlemen" or otherwise fanciful people to make up words simply to sound like they were educated or to amuse. Shakespeare did it himself, and he lampooned the trend in his work.

So, for instance, one gets this from Love's Labour's Lost:

I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word;
for thou art not so long by the head as
honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier
swallowed than a flap-dragon.

That was a joke, but it did lead to the actual use of the word (or, rather, honorificabilitudinity) by other authors.

Apparently, Shakespeare came up with "eyeball" rather than just "eye" or "orison" or some other term. I was unaware of that, but I found this site, quite by accident:

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/bio...

(There's my "something new" I learned for today.)

Some of the words Shakespeare used later had a definition attributed to them, some were later altered to fit into a term that already existed, others were just coined by him and adopted soon after.

I think it's fair to say he relied on them in that he did use "new" or "made up" words a lot. At least, more frequently than I think other authors did/do. That's probably debatable. Guys like David Foster Wallace did it a lot too. However, for a 20th century writer, the technique seems to be at least a reference to the Shakespearean technique....

It didn't hurt that the first English-English dictionaries started to get assembled in the century or so following the publishing of Shakespeare's work.

I'm sure somebody somewhere has done a whole study on the innovative use of vocabulary by Shakespeare. To be fair, it was more common for people to make up words then than now because dictionaries hadn't been compiled.

Nabokov does something similar in his work, but generally he'll use a homonym an anagram or a near anagram. I understood that he'd coined the word "nymphet" but I just looked it up, and that's not correct. Apparently, he did change the definition into its current sexually suggestive one, but it predates his use.

(There's two "somethings new" I learned today. Not bad for a Friday.)

[Esdaile]

Interesting.. Still, this hardly constitutes "relying on made up words". Also, the example you give from Love's Labour's Lost" is Latin, and is not really a made up word at all. I think Shakespeare used about ninety new words, meaning words of his own invention (I have not counted :)) Relying on made up words would mean that the work falls apart or at least fails without them. That is not the case with Shakespeare. James Joyce in "Finnegan's Wake" is the only case I can think of where a writer relies on made up words to create what he wrote.

[Carrie]

Fatin wrote: "I was talking about just myself, not anyone else. But...I suppose it would be awful and hard but I may find a way out of it. Rape, that is.
Thing is, I found it easier to almost forgive Grenouille ..."

I'm w fatin on this one. Rape>murder

[Anne]

Esdaile wrote: I do not think people say "I am going to be a drug addict/homosexual "

I want to go on record as objecting to homosexual being in this category. Homosexuality does not cause harm. Language matters, that is why we are all here right?

I'll jump on a common bandwagon, recently Sam Harris', and opine that the most logical way to define immorality is that it causes harm (see his TED talk on how science can determine morality). I'm not a huge fan of Nietzshe, probably Bertrand Russell's influence, but I'll agree that he was right about morality when it comes to institutions of morality being very flawed and downright immoral, example: gitmo.

Gary reminds us that hh is a serial pedo. I'm allowing myself the prerogative to define all hebes as pedos but not all pedos as hebes. Winning on a loophole!

Esdaile drives a hard bargain with the IRA comparison. Even though I sympathize with team Fatin/Carrie, I am not onboard. Terrorists are brainwashed into doing awful acts of war, whereas the HH types are slithering around exploiting family members. Granted the awfulness of war trumps pretty much anything but let's just agree that child abuse is universally extremely highly disdained and brings up fear and disgust reactions. No doubt there are biological reasons for these as there are for all of our emotional reactions.

Regarding word definitions: Do we agree that the way we interpret the word rape, and words in general, includes emotion? This messes with static word definitions. Why is an old definition more valid? I would think the opposite.

Even so I enjoy grammar and strange name policing as a hobby. Grammar police aren't really uptight and don't really care or feel superior, its just funny. Not sure if anyone making the joke pedalphile (lol btw) is in a position to judge.

[Anne]

for team Brad/Mickey in case they are still around: Stockholm syndrome!

Hh gets no leniency for mental illness. Narcissism just does not garner sympathy let alone the pedo. part.

[Anthony]

Anne, my only concern with people who get wrapped up in grammar and punctuation (I am a writer, I clean up anything that I write professionally), is that most of them do judge people. They think people who don't use language in the standard way they expect are not as smart as they are. I am a lefty, but I get tired of the folks making fun of misspelled signs. of course, if I was angry enough to make a homemade sign and stand in the street holding it above my head, I would be careful. but to use the bad grammar, improper word choice, or other flaws in their communication, as a way to discredit someone whose ideas you disagree with is weak minded on the part of the attacker, more than on the part of the person with a crude sign. if someone is fighting for a cause I believe in, (Pro Choice, Anti Death penalty, Living Wages, Ending War, Saving the Earth, etc., I do not want them discredited, because they missed a comma or said 'you're' when they meant 'your'. some of the smartest people I have ever met struggled with these issues, or more fairly hardly struggled, as thy were focused on real world problems and they solved them by communicating in a functional way and doing things that mattered. most grammar Nazis I have met, certainly not everyone, because I daresay I have not met most of them, know little about life, or the human condition, but spend a inordinate amount of their lives tearing down those who are actually productive members of society. somehow, we have gotten a long way away from the thread's original focus, so unless someone wants to start a thread regarding this content, I will refrain from any further hijacking. without further ado, I will get on my bike and ride (with apologies to Queen!)

[Laureen]

Anthony wrote: "Anne, my only concern with people who get wrapped up in grammar and punctuation (I am a writer, I clean up anything that I write professionally), is that most of them do judge people. They think pe..."

Oh, my goodness, now I see where you are coming from Anthony. You are "calling the kettle black" as I see it. At the risk of sounding judgmental about someone I do not know, but in consideration of the written words as I just read them, Anthony, you are sounding so self-righteous.

So far you have said that those who do not agree with you espouse war, and all those other things like anti pro choice, pro death penalty etc etc. Well, I happen to have my own opinions about those things and it has taken me a lifetime of self doubt and life experience to come to those conclusions and, of course, nothing is concluded yet - because I am not dead!

As for being called a grammar Nazi, where did that come from? Simply because I love our language. I am not an educated person so I was enjoying the debate between you and Esdaile which was on a more intellectual level but I am by no means a language expert. Are you a bit of a bully? Am I inferior because I don't enjoy the angry and demanding voice of left-wing activists. There is a more peaceable way to make change happen.

Try getting involved with the life stories of all people throughout the world and you might be surprised at your own closely held beliefs and dogmatism. As a rule, I don't make judgments of others unless I know their story.

Some people don't feel secure without a mob to follow them and agree with them. I hold my own opinions and, no, you don't have to agree with me. Also, you can't have an honest, acceptable opinion until you have experienced both "sides" of an issue. But you have time, obviously.

[Anne]

Pardon my wild guess 2 cents here but it sounds like Laureen is mistaking Anthony's passion for sanctimony and Anthony is mistaking Laureen's lack of language plasticity for apathy.

Passion can come off as self righteous if not tempered with humility and humor. Language preservation can come off as rigidly old school if not flexible enough to embrace language evolution.

[Gary]

It's difficult to convey tone through text, though I find much of it (and much of life) is in the adjectives.

With that in mind, I think the Wikipedia admonishment to "assume good faith" is on the right track. That is, one should assume a positive tone when reading cold, hard HTML.... Of course, when it's clear that a positive tone isn't being employed then that's an issue (and probably outside the scope of this thread) but it works as a general rule.

[Laureen]

Anne wrote: "Pardon my wild guess 2 cents here but it sounds like Laureen is mistaking Anthony's passion for sanctimony and Anthony is mistaking Laureen's lack of language plasticity for apathy.

Passion can ..."

I think you have it around the wrong way Anne? Just a thought, but I see myself as passionate and Anthony as rigid! See the dilemma here?

[Anthony]

:)

[Esdaile]

Anne wrote: "Esdaile wrote: I do not think people say "I am going to be a drug addict/homosexual "

I want to go on record as objecting to homosexual being in this category. Homosexuality does not cause harm. L..."
If immorality is defined as causing harm, then eating animals is immoral, just for starters. Nietzsche did not limit his critique of morality to the morality or otherwise of institutions. Bertrand Russel's chapter on Nietzsche was superficial, as apparently he had the honesty to subsequently admit himself. Nietszche's argument was that morality is used as a weapon in the struggle for power. We can certainly define immoral acts as acts which according to a given perspective or position harm/weaken those who claim that the act is immoral. Homosexuality was considered immoporal in the past (still considered immoral by Islam) and it was argued that it harmed those who practised it. When it Comes to harming an enemy, people do not condemn an act as immoral. Presumably nobody thinks that combatting a disease by eradicating a microbe which is harming our species is immoral, but from the point of view of the microbe it would indeed be immoral to help humans in this undertaking.

[Anthony]

on this point I have to agree with Esdaile!

[Anne]

Where is the evidence that homosexuality causes harm other than persecution?

Qualifying the Sam Harrissian definition of morality, add: As it pertains to humans. Harm can also be qualified from here to eternity. I'll use "ability of an individual human to stay alive." Morality used for power: agreed. Morality defined by the person defining it: agreed. Homosexuality "considered" immoral by institutions that want power: agreed. Miscegenation was also considered immoral by those same institutions, are you on board with putting that in this category?

Eating animals: many vegetarians think its immoral and even omnivores that are aware of modern farm practices find it horribly immoral (have you seen food inc?).

Organisms: They are welcome to live if they aren't trying to kill me, back to the definition of harm.

I seem to recall some push back against institutional definitions of morality earlier, how can it be used as evidence now?

[Anne]

Laureen wrote: "Anne wrote: "Pardon my wild guess 2 cents here but it sounds like Laureen is mistaking Anthony's passion for sanctimony and Anthony is mistaking Laureen's lack of language plasticity for apathy.
..."

Okay Laureen I do hear your passion. And I even agree with some of it. But aren't we on the losing side of history? The new definitions are coming and will win. Just as every generation's words and pop culture wins over its forebears. Our only hope is to help shape it and sway the direction it goes next.

[Anthony]

zakly

[Esdaile]

Anne wrote: "Where is the evidence that homosexuality causes harm other than persecution?

Qualifying the Sam Harrissian definition of morality, add: As it pertains to humans. Harm can also be qualified from ..."

There was plenty of harm offered as evidence in its time, some of it scientifically very dubious and some of it self-fulfilling. A spectacular example of the self-fulfilling claim of the harm caused by homosexuality was that being homosexual made the homosexual depressed. Well, if everybody thought you were sick for being homosexual and you could only find people with similar inclinations in public lavatories, that might well be a tad depressing! There we have the self-fulfilling diagnosis of the harm caused by homosexuality, at once true and not true. Homosexuality may also be considered harmful insofar as it undermines or may be argued to undermine, the distinction between the female and male principle which is the source of the dialectic of generation among advanced organisms. The ancient Panic that the tribe could die out is at the heart of the fear of homosexuality among simple people. Miscegenation may certainly be considered harmful from the point of view of the survival of any subspecies of Homo sapiens, since it per defintion means the erasing of differences between subspecies (races) in order to replace races with a racially non-defined undifferentiated species without evolutionary branches within the species. For myself, I consider a lack of respect for life immoral, in other words the assumption of the Separation of our species from the rest of the created world (would be delighted if all factory farming was made illegal); I am nevertheless aware that my notion of morality too is intrinsically linked to my own drive to make the world more like the world I want to "have", in other words to the will to power without which I would have no will to live. Plenty of organisms do you no harm but some harm you in order to satisfy their own will to power. If they do so, you or ofen without your knowing it your body, is in conflict with them. Morality is fine, necessary even, but I can never entirely convince myself that it is not all time-bound and time-defined, never quite absolute. Followers of religions, certainly the three great semitic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam DO believe in a timeless anthropocentric morality, which I would regard as ultimately fraudulent because while it Claims to be timeless it is entirely time bound, to the strivings and struggles of its heroes and anti-heroes.

[Laureen]

Anne wrote: "Laureen wrote: "Anne wrote: "Pardon my wild guess 2 cents here but it sounds like Laureen is mistaking Anthony's passion for sanctimony and Anthony is mistaking Laureen's lack of language plastici..."

I agree, and that is all I was trying to say.

[Anne]

Laureen wrote: "I agree, and that is all I was trying to say. "

Well there you go then. Dang lack of inflection.

Esdaile wrote: " Claims to be timeless it is entirely time bound, to the strivings and struggles of its heroes and anti-heroes."

I admit to being speciesist, only because I don't know how else to stay alive and only insofar as it is necessary to stay alive. Regarding religious morality, agree 100%. Regarding homosexuality as the antithesis to tribal panic, perhaps back when there were precious few of us that could be an argument for harm, but nowadays mother nature might need to readjust in the other direction. You've probably seen this but just in case,

http://worldlyminds.com/wp-content/up...

[David]

Fatin wrote: "I don't understand HOW anybody cannot see that he does rape Lolita. Yes, she's attracted to him, yes she makes moves on him. She's a twelve year old! In the beginning of the book, she's compared hi..."
Fatin, people don't see him as a pedophile/rapist because of rape culture. This is a seriously great example of how pervasive misogyny, rape culture, and sexism are.

Of course he is all of these things! and many men & women defend him because we live in a society that devalues women and prizes men.

[Peter]

This book sold a lot of copies. In fact, the book made the author, who writes in English as if one else speaks the language, a great deal of money. I wonder why it was so popular in such civilized places as the USA and Europe?

[Carrie]

I like this book. I really do, even though everything in me knows not to and to go against it. Its actually disgusting, really. But this book is so good. The author knew exactly what he was doing when writing this book.

[Anthony]

Peter, because, as Carrie points out, this is a great book and the author manages to take us somewhere we do not want to go, but we have to admit it is a great trip, even if we remain disgusted.

[Anne]

Same reason people still put up with Woody Allen and those types.

[Scott]

Anne wrote: "Same reason people still put up with Woody Allen and those types."

Geniuses?

[Anne]

"Genius" tainted with destructive narcissism and misogyny.

[David]

Peter wrote: "This book sold a lot of copies. In fact, the book made the author, who writes in English as if one else speaks the language, a great deal of money. I wonder why it was so popular in such civilized ..."

Because it is a perfect example of an unreliable narrator, and the tricks that a skilled author can do with fiction.

The *point* of making HH a pedophile and rapist is to make him thoroughly disreputable and unlikable; Nabokov starts with the worst of the worst for his character, before making you root for him and want him to be happy.

Nabokov then slowly teases apart the lies and the unreliable nature of HH as narrator; he is literally showing you his amazing skill as a writer, and also demonstrating *how* the worst monsters get away with their crimes. They charm, impress, and flatter you.

This is an important book. It demonstrates what *real* evil looks like, and it does so with incredibly beautiful writing and a mastery of literary technique that few writers can display.

The point of the book was never that HH is right; rather, the entire genius and strength of the novel REQUIRES HH to be everything awful we think he is.

[David]

Anne wrote: ""Genius" tainted with destructive narcissism and misogyny."

I think you missed the entire point of the book; Nabokov would agree with you that HH is evil to the core. Nabokov is showing how that evil works and flourishes in our world, where we expect the villains to twirl their mustaches and make grandiose monologues before shooting the hero.

Unlike Woody Allen, who is merely demonstrating his own personal psychosis for a world stage, Nabokov is nothing like his character; he has created this character to talk to us about real evil and the insidious, charming, Woody Allen like facade it presents.

[Anne]

I agree I have totally conflated the author and the character my bad

[Gary]

Anthony wrote: "pedalphile?"

Anthony wrote: "sorry, I have a sick mind, in case no one noticed, not about little girls, but about word play..."

True story: This was back in the mid-90's, shortly after they started tracking sexual felons and making them report their whereabouts all the time. The Amber Alert system was new, and the media were all over that kind of thing, having covered some pretty big child abduction/murders. (The JonBenét Ramsey case was still occasionally in the news cycle.)

It was a slow news day and suddenly there was a sexual predator on the loose. I don't recall the details of how he'd escaped the authorities. Maybe he had stopped going to counseling, maybe he'd actually violated his parole, or maybe he'd moved or changed his phone number without telling them. In any case, the local news had got hold of the story, and they were ON IT! The people need to know, for the safety of all the kids and stuff.

So, the newscasters are scrambling to get the info on the situation. There's a monster out prowling the streets! Lock up your children! This goes on for a good 20 minutes.

After a lot of hullabaloo they finally get hold of this guy's PO (parole officer.)

"For more on this breaking story, we go live to Chet Masters...." [Not the reporter's real name.]

They cut to a young, eager faced reporter, fired up and about to MAKE HIS BONES. He's clean-shaven. His hair is perfect. This is going to springboard him out of local and right into national news, baby. The man who brought down The Predator! The PO was this overweight, balding guy, who clearly had seen it all. A tired public servant who does a dirty job for not enough money and he knows we all know it.

The facts, sir, just the facts (at first.) How long has he been missing? Since just this morning? Really? You guys in the parole department are doing great work tracking these felons. Great work. Where could he be? Well, if you knew that I guess you wouldn't be looking for him, heh, heh. Does he have any known associates he could be hiding out with?

Finally, the reporter gets down to the nitty-gritty. The salacious details of the monster's despicable crimes.

What are this sexual predator's hideous acts of perversity? What did he do to his innocent victims? How, exactly, did he harm people?

"He tickles them."

There was a good three seconds before the reporter managed to say, "He does what?"

"Yeah, he tickles their feet."

"...feet? How does he..."

"Well, he'd go to the park in Summer when the girls are all wearing flip-flops, you know, and see a girl sitting on a park bench, dangling her sandal on her toe, or lying on the ground reading a book with her feet in the air, and he'd walk up and tickle her feet, and then he'd run away."

"He tickles..." the reporter was still clearly trying to grasp the horror of the crime.

"Yeah, and sometimes he'd go to a public swimming pool, where everyone was sitting on the edge kicking their feet, and he'd swim under the water."

"Did he touch them in the pool?" the reporter asked, dare I say hopefully?

"Oh, no. He'd just swim underneath and let them kick him in the head ."

With that, the guy actually motioned with his hand, repeatedly smacking himself on the back of the head to illustrate the impact of sodden feet on pervert cranium. Smack, smack, smack!

It turns out The Predator wasn't so much a pedophile as a podophile (a foot fetishist) though he did get nabbed for a sex crime as the definition of the laws on that have to do with touching someone for "sexual purposes" (or words to that effect) makes it "sexual battery" or some such crime. Apparently this guy would go home and gratify himself thinking about all the toes he'd tickled and splish-splashy kicks on his noggin'. Therefore, sex crime.

By this time, I'm writhing on my couch, doubled up with laughter, so I didn't hear the reporter's "back to you speech" but I did see the look of blankness that he used to cover for his mortification and professional disappointment, followed by the bewildered expressions on the faces of the anchors when they cut back to them. Absolutely priceless.

I'm sure having some random creeper tickle your feet is unsettling, but my point here is that when it comes to the issue of word play, I'm sure we'd all rather deal with the "podo" rather than the "pedo" right?

[Anne]

David wrote: "....I think you missed the entire point of the book; Nabokov would agree with you that HH is evil to the core. Nabokov is showi..."

I wanted to add one thing in my defense and which is the whole reason that this thread exists and not just stating the obvious. An example is after the book was published there was a movie made that represented it as, to paraphrase an astute commenter in the lolita in pop culture thread, a relationship that just did not work out. Due to the timing, I assumed the author gave his stamp of approval to that movie. Very possibly a wrong assumption but in any event, whether the character is really all that bad or even close to a monster appears to be a matter of some debate.

[Gary]

Anne wrote: "An example is after the book was published there was a movie made that represented it as, to paraphrase an astute commenter in the lolita in pop culture thread, a relationship that just did not work out.

You mean the 1962 adaptation, right? I would argue that the 1997 adaptation is equally problematic. Though the 60's version is more stark, the more recent version still tells the story without any sense of the unreliable narrative theme that runs through Nabokov's text. It's hard to convey something like that in film, though I didn't really get a sense that they really even tried.

Anne wrote: "Due to the timing, I assumed the author gave his stamp of approval to that movie. Very possibly a wrong assumption but in any event, whether the character is really all that bad or even close to a monster appears to be a matter of some debate. "

That's an interesting issue. How much did Nabokov have to do with the early adaptation of his book? I suspect not much because he left the country in '61, so he'd have been either gone, or in the process of leaving around the time of filming. Plus, it was very much a Hollywood production, meaning the film makers were happy to take liberties with the source material.

Still, interesting point....

With it in mind, however, I would be careful about reading too much into the novel from either the 1962 or the 1997 adaptations. Aside from the fact that any adaptation is, by definition, "interfered with" by any number of people by the time it gets to the big screen, film is not always the best way to convey prose, and I'd argue that Nabokov is particularly difficult to portray in a video format. The unreliability of the narrator is difficult to convey in film. It's been done in movies like Jacob's Ladder and by guys like David Lynch (who has a similar eye for that kind of thing) but I didn't get any sense from either of those adaptations that they were making any particular effort to convey Humbert as unreliable. In fact, the opposite ends up happening. We have it presented to us as fact--we see it--and that makes us totally buy into Humbert's POV, even in places where we probably should know better.

[Carrie]

Anthony wrote: "Peter, because, as Carrie points out, this is a great book and the author manages to take us somewhere we do not want to go, but we have to admit it is a great trip, even if we remain disgusted."

Yes! Exactly the point I was trying to make.

[David]

Anne wrote: "David wrote: "....I think you missed the entire point of the book; Nabokov would agree with you that HH is evil to the core. Nabokov is showi..."

I wanted to add one thing in my defense and which ..."

Oh, no need to defend yourself; I made a comment earlier that rape culture makes HH appear to be more sympathetic now, and I stand by it. I think the current social conversation around sexual assault, led by men who make apologies for rape and rapists, colors the discussion of this book.

I don't mean to criticize you in defending the book; I'm super frustrated by anyone who defends HH, and I think you're right in your distaste for him and them.

Interestingly, even at the time, people didn't understand what Nabokov was doing; I'd point though to Nafisi, the woman who wrote 'Reading Lolita in Tehran'; she seems to see it as a worthy novel and one that has much to say about sexism and the abuses that men perpetrate on women.

Critics definitely are torn on the Kubrick adaptation; largely, it seems they think it was a terrible film that failed to bring the wit, irony, and truth behind the novel to the screen.

[Gary]

I don't dislike the '62 adaptation, personally, but... it is what it is. It's not Nabokov's novel.

Kubrick was a great film maker, but I suspect he was not a great reader. What I mean by that is that he apparently missed [Edit: or ignored] the themes of several of the books he adapted. Sometimes by happenstance. See, for instance, the problem with his adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, which the author, Anthony Burgess, completely rejected. Or see The Shining which hasn't got a whole heck of a lot of King's voice in it....

Still, he made interesting movies. However, they really should be seen as different from the books that inspired them.

[Anne]

Gary wrote:that jus..."

Yes the 62 version. I did not see the later one. I don't understand the perspective of these movies. It does make me wonder how Hollywood works and the lack of censure of Woody Allen for marrying his daughter plus Roman Polanski etc... I know I'm mixing art and artists. I can't seem to stop doing that.

David wrote: "Anne wrote: "David wrote: "....I think you missed the entire point of the book; Nabokov would agree with you that HH is evil to the core. Nabokov is showi..."

You describe how Nabakov deliberately gives us what amounts to stockholm syndrome. Many folks interpret Lolita as a metaphor for youth or the new country or language and hh as the old. It all makes sense but I also can't seem to stop taking this book literally.

100% agree that rape culture is a critical part of this whole topic. We are going through some cultural paradigm shifts right now and I am hopeful they will lead to us being a more civilized society. #yesallwomen!

I have "Reading.... Tehran" on my list but have not mustered the guts to tackle it.

It is a pleasure chatting with you people.

[Anthony]

I have enjoyed this thread, too

[David]

I'm with you, Anne, and sorry for any negative tone in my reply to you before!

I think the book is a real feat to pull off; I think it'd be really hard to get the subversive elements into a film.

I'd say it goes farther than Stockholm Syndrome, though; I think we have a real problem with recognizing evil, and I think this book gives us some clues that would help us recognize evil around us. We want the cartoon devil to be the evil one, not the quiet, sympathetic guy with his obsessions.

Nabokov famously said he dislike symbolism or letting his characters/plots stand in for other issues & causes. I think we're meant to read Lolita not as a stand-in for the new world, but as a tale of predation and evil, and a perfect demonstration of the unreliable narrator.

I think it's fair to mix the art and the artists, especially! when the artist has done something deplorable. That's an old debate, that I think will continue for as long as there is art, artists, and an audience.

[Gary]

Anne wrote: "Yes the 62 version. I did not see the later one. I don't understand the perspective of these movies. It does make me wonder how Hollywood works and the lack of censure of Woody Allen for marrying his daughter plus Roman Polanski etc... I know I'm mixing art and artists. I can't seem to stop doing that."

Is Woody Allen in the mainstream news a lot lately? He keeps coming up in Goodreads threads. It makes a certain sense in this context, but it's a little odd when discussing Ender's Game. (Maybe not that odd, now that I think on it....)

In any case, the 1997 version is very close to the book, but it misses the narrative voice entirely, so we lose the irony of Nabokov's prose and wind up with something very close to the interpretation that so many people seem to make of the book that embraces it as a love story, or that, at least, makes Delores out to be a wonton seductress. In the film, we have no reason to believe she is the victim, because we see her seducing Humbert. Of course she's a nymph. The film gives us a very sexualized Dominique Swain in ways ranging from her costumes right through the cinematography. In doing so, they fundamentally miss the point of the novel.

Plus, if one wants to tell Nabokov's tale, Adrian Lyne isn't the guy. The man who made Fatal Attraction and Unfaithful probably doesn't get Lolita....

However, to be fair, it's hard to see how any film maker could have actually got it right. How do you show something on screen but convey that it may be all part of the pathology of a rapist without the adaptation becoming farcical? You can't split the screen and have one shot of Swain covered in make-up, lisping provocatively at the camera and then another shot next to it in which she's a gawky, pre-teen looking scrawny and coltish. It'd be ridiculous.

The only way I can see it being done is with an intrusive amount of voice-over, and at a certain point it isn't a film at all any more, but a reading.