Lolita
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I'm having a really difficult time reading this book
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I probably won't read anymore fiction by Nabokov for a long time. In short, I found this novel to be more about the author showing off his command of the English language (and much kudos there--after all this is his 3rd language at least!) than about telling a good story.
I enjoyed, and almost loved the first part. I was engaged in the story and in love with the prose. But perhaps it was too much of a good thing or some other turn that the novel went down which left me exasperated.
Despite his claim about not liking symbols in his essay at the end of the book, the narrator-perpetrator is a critical semiologist making short work of a multitude, rather an abundance, of signs and symbols of American culture. An English major's dream world really. Perhaps that's enough to read this work of genius.
I was moved to read it because I've written a novel on a similar subject and well it was a must read.
Perhaps when I was younger if I had read this I would have too been as caught with the whole fabric of the work that so many others adore.
Still it is an important and controversial work. I suppose that, and Nabokov's masterful prose style make it worthy of the "best" lists on which it lands. But its not in my top 100 today.
Sorry Vlad!
Sandy wrote: "I wanted to read it, given how well it is written. But I could not get past the content. I gave up."Sympathies. Just find something more compatible to read. "Lolita," really is problematic. Don't worry about it.
Its torture trying to read the book without the annotated version, unless you're an extremely erudite esoteric professorial/language lover type. I wonder if Nabokov would be diagnosed on the Autistic/Asperger syndrome if he were a youngster in our day and age. In spite of the fact that Humbert lies to himself and to us, he STILL flaunts how awful he is, doesn't he? I am always stunned when someone tries to tell me that Lolita is to blame for ANY of Humbert's choices. But what is Nabokov's ultimate goal, what did he want us to get out of this book, besides the display of his obviously superior intelligence?
I've read Nabokov thought an author should enchant a reader. If he means 'put under a spell' that he does.
A really creepy, painful, enchantment. And yet, i read and reread it, because it teaches me how much i am probably missing in other works of art.
I've read Nabokov thought an author should enchant a reader. If he means 'put under a spell' that he does.
A really creepy, painful, enchantment. And yet, i read and reread it, because it teaches me how much i am probably missing in other works of art.
Joshua wrote: "Does anyone else find this book extremely difficult to follow or am I just a complete idiot? Its very well written but for some reason I'm having the hardest time getting through it. The subject ma..."Joshua wrote: "Does anyone else find this book extremely difficult to follow or am I just a complete idiot? Its very well written but for some reason I'm having the hardest time getting through it. The subject ma..."
Joshua wrote: "Does anyone else find this book extremely difficult to follow or am I just a complete idiot? Its very well written but for some reason I'm having the hardest time getting through it. The subject ma..."
Jen wrote: "I wonder if Nabokov would be diagnosed on the Autistic/Asperger syndrome if he were a youngster in our day and age."He did have synesthesia. Both he and his mother saw the letters on a printed page in colors rather than black on white.
How did that affect his writing? That's hard to say. That it had an effect I have little doubt, though. I'm sure he picked the occasional word or spelling because of the way it looked on the page. Lolita visits "Camp Q" over the Summer while Humbert is scheming and her mother is killed. Why "Q" there? Why not Camp Kiwaniwanatoola Lake or any other name he could have chosen? Because he saw "a subtle interaction... between sound and shape" so the letter "Q" was "browner than K."
What does that mean exactly? Beats me. But it's a weird thing as you go through his work, you can tell that he can tell.
I wonder why Nabakov chose the duplicated name "Humbert Humbert" for his protagonist ?
Charles wrote: "Joshua wrote: "Does anyone else find this book extremely difficult to follow or am I just a complete idiot? Its very well written but for some reason I'm having the hardest time getting through it...."I felt the same way when reading it, & especially not understanding French.
No I have never found it difficult to follow. Over the last forty years I have read it three times, seen the Kubrick movie twice and the Adrian Lyne movie a few times. The Lyne film is much truer literally to Nabokov, but the Kubrick with Peter Sellers is good in a different way. I advise you to watch the Lyne film to catch the drift of the plot.
The plot is not the difficult thing to follow, A detailed description of a man's depravity and manipulation as he simultaneously travels America and destroys a child's life. We know that,Mitch. Its everything else that we have to look up and translate. Most of us are not cosmopolitan world traveling geniuses with an astounding bank of knowledge to play with in a language or two. Those who say it isn't difficult to follow are either 1. Dilettantes who don't know what they're not paying attention to. or 2. Learned professionals who pay attention to every detail.
Jen wrote: "The plot is not the difficult thing to follow, A detailed description of a man's depravity and manipulation as he simultaneously travels America and destroys a child's life. We know that,Mitch. It..."I think I must fall somewhere between the dilettante and the professional. Much is there to understand and take delight in beyond the plot. I'm sure there is a lot I will never note but there are a thousand felicitous phrases such as " Leave it to a murderer to have a fancy prose style" or 'She was lo in the morning..." or simply the names of the motels and the other dissections of Americana that make me laugh and marvel at his perspicacity and wit.
You're making me smile, remembering with you. Do you find it fair for me to say that Nabokov is one of the most sophisticated,merciless smart asses the world has ever known?
Mitch wrote: "Jen wrote: "The plot is not the difficult thing to follow, A detailed description of a man's depravity and manipulation as he simultaneously travels America and destroys a child's life. We know th..."I can relate to falling somewhere in between. I've read Lolita twice but not for a while. For me, it's time to re-read, this time the annotated version.
Jen wrote: "You're making me smile, remembering with you. Do you find it fair for me to say that Nabokov is one of the most sophisticated,merciless smart asses the world has ever known?"Without a doubt.
Mitch wrote: "Jen wrote: "You're making me smile, remembering with you. Do you find it fair for me to say that Nabokov is one of the most sophisticated,merciless smart asses the world has ever known?"Without a..."
That's a good description. Azar Nafisi thought Lolita important enough to risk imprisonment, as she discusses in 'Reading Lolita in Tehran.'
Rebecca K-G wrote: "I wonder why Nabakov chose the duplicated name "Humbert Humbert" for his protagonist ?"Maybe because he wanted HH to seem ridiculous and pitiful. Or laughable, demeaned in a way, adding to his repulsiveness.
Karen wrote: "Rebecca K-G wrote: "I wonder why Nabakov chose the duplicated name "Humbert Humbert" for his protagonist ?"Maybe because he wanted HH to seem ridiculous and pitiful. Or laughable, demeaned in a w..."
It's really close to humbug and a funny name to say out loud.
Rebecca K-G wrote: "I wonder why Nabakov chose the duplicated name "Humbert Humbert" for his protagonist ?""Humbert" means "bright warrior" according to the baby name website I just checked, though it's a pretty unusual name.
However, I suspect he chose that name for the reason, among others, that Kallie mentions: its similarly to the word "humbug" but also its generally silly sound.
In the annotated version of Lolita there's something of an essay about the name. It includes this quote from the Playboy interview with Nabokov:
"The double rumble is, I think, very nasty, very suggestive. It is a hateful name for a hateful person. It is also a kingly name, but I did need a royal vibration for Humbert the Fierce and Humbert the Humble. Lends itself also to a number of puns."Bearing that kind of thing in mind, I can't help but notice, for instance, that if one puts the name together one gets "humberthumbert." That spells out the word "thumb" right in the center.
So what? Well, if one goes through Lolita carefully there are a lot of references to that finger, and several are sexual.
...for there was, I swear, a yellowish-violet bruise on her lovely nymphet thigh which my huge hairy hand massaged and slowly enveloped--and because of her very perfunctory underthings, there seemed to be nothing to prevent my muscular thumb from reaching the hot hollow of her groin--just as you might tickle and caress a giggling child--just that--and: "Oh it's nothing at all," she cried...and
...on her brown shoulder, a raised purple-pink swelling (the work of some gnat) which I eased of its beautiful transparent poison between my long thumbnails and then sucked till I was gorged on her spicy blood.What's more, just to make the thumb=penis thing clear, there's a paragraph in which Humbert muses about the species of "Hitchhiking Man, Homo pollex of science" with "priapically thrusting out tense thumbs to tempt lone women or sadsack salesmen with fancy cravings."
Priapic means "of, relating to, or resembling a phallus" and the annotated version of Lolita notes that the Hitchhiking man, called "Homo pollex" by Humbert is a combination "homo" for human and "pollex" for "thumb." So, there's a whole paragraph there about the nature of sexuality, particularly the range of male sexuality.
There are at least a dozen pointed "thumb" references in the book, many of which have the thumb as a phallus.
Kallie wrote: "It's really close to humbug and a funny name to say out loud."It is funny, and the book is full of Humbert's humor- Humorous Humbert was a humbug.
Thanks everyone for all the insights and new info.
Gary wrote: "Rebecca K-G wrote: "I wonder why Nabakov chose the duplicated name "Humbert Humbert" for his protagonist ?""Humbert" means "bright warrior" according to the baby name website I just checked, thou..."
Thanks, Gary. Your detailed analyses are unusual and contribute so much to keeping discussion alive. 'Lolita' is a novel ever worthy of that.
If you don't like it, ask yourself if there is any reason you feel you are obligated to read it right now. Unless it is a specific class assignment you are free to put it down. You may want to come back to it at another time in your life. Life is too short and there are too many great books in the world to torture yourself over one that you are not enjoying. Just my two cents.
I feel the same *_*
Jen wrote: "The plot is not the difficult thing to follow, A detailed description of a man's depravity and manipulation as he simultaneously travels America and destroys a child's life. We know that,Mitch. It..."You don't have to look everything up, that takes the joy out of reading it, if you can call it joy. I didn't look up any of the french in the novel, and a few references I probably missed, but I don't believe it mattered.
Kallie wrote: "She sees Lolita as an exploration of how those with power oppress the powerless. The subject matter is not so disturbing when you think about the many forms this sort of inequality assumes in all societies"I got that from the novel as well.
The pedophilia was almost incidental: it virtually disappears from the story a third of the way through, and serves mostly as a means to get a woman completely under Humbert's power.
The same story could be told with an invalid or a mentally-handicapped woman, who would be just as dependent on Humbert -- only their escape would not be inevitable, as Lolita's is. She just has to reach 17 or 18 for him to lose interest (although, as it turns out, this is not the case).
In terms of the novel being tough to read, for me the overwrought prose is the entire point. Humbert is the kind of guy who tries to impress and intimidate people with his knowledge and erudition; in writing his memoirs, he is applying this technique on the reader. The writing itself is an insight into his personality, and into why others in the novel react to him in the way they do.
The references and illusions can seem overwhelming at first, but as with the majority of such cases, they are gratuitous. The trick is to separate Humbert's pompous description (referring to the sun as Io) from his oblique way of referring to characters (Lolita and Quilty come to mind).
The pompous description is the sort of stuff written for the reader with a "classical education", and has fallen out of favor. You get used to it if you read a lot of "literate" (i.e. non-populist) pre-20th century stuff, though like many 20th century writers and poets (*cough* T S Eliot) who attempt it, Nabokov is trying too hard.
Kallie wrote: "Thanks, Gary. Your detailed analyses are unusual and contribute so much to keeping discussion alive. 'Lolita' is a novel ever worthy of that. "Ah, nice of you to say. I'm going to have to note that it's all down to Nabokov, though. I just look at it and pick out the complexities. I'm sure I miss more than I find.
Karen wrote: "Gary, you have an excellent memory or you take great notes while reading!"
Heh. I've probably read Lolita 6-8 times, and I find new things every single time.
In this case, the "thumb" issue with his name is a new one. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't really see it until this thread. However, it looks to me like one of the things Nabokov was doing was making a characterization of Humbert as a "thumber" and that makes him something of a sexual deviant, per the way he uses that word in the book. Nabokov was, as stated before, a synesthete, so he would have seen the letters spelled out more clearly than other readers, but if one imagines the repetitive name "Humbert Humbert" spelled out like this:
HumberTHUMBERthumberTHUMBERthumberTHUMBERthumber
then we get a text view that gives a hint of how clear it would probably have been to Nabokov. He'd have seen those letters in colors, so it would have stood out even more boldly.
But Nabokov also puns on the name a lot, particularly early in the book. Take a look at the first paragraph of chapter 3:
She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland, with rash curiosity; he surveyed it with a shrug of amused distaste; and it seemed to me now that she was ready to turn away from it with something akin to plain repulsion. Never did she vibrate under my touch, and a strident "what d'you think you are doing?" was all I got for my pains. To the wonderland I had to offer, my fool preferred the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. To think that between a Hambuger and a Humburger, she would--invariably, with icy precision--plump for the former. There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. Did I mention the name of that milk bar I visited a moment ago? It was, of all things, The Frigid Queen. Smiling a little sadly, I dubbed her My Frigid Princess. She did not see the wistful joke.I don't suppose most readers do either.... It's an elaborate one, and based on an awful lot of his own inner dialogue.
Nabokov alliterates with umber/Humberland and then puns with Hamburger/Humburger. He makes himself a master of his world--or his reality--and then proposes himself as both meat and rejected lover. Her taste is corny and cloying (otherwise, she'd not resist him) making her "frigid" if no less alluring.
Thank god I am not the only one who has found this book pretty difficult.Being a non-native English speaker I struggled to understand what I was certainly reading some times - not to mention that the vocabulary is overwhelming and that sometimes I didn't know whether trust Humbert.I definitely have to read it again in a couple of years.
It is one of the most difficult books ever, really, to read. Read the annotated version, it helps immensely. I annotated the book myself as i read along, which was kind of fun, actually, but that was knowing I would read it over, so I wasn't bothered by the interruption of flow of the story. I was so grateful for the internet, can you imagine trying to look up everything you don't understand in this book without the internet? Just, no.
I've developed a website that displays pictures associate with each word from paragraphs.So instead of just reading normal plain text words, it's more interesting and fun way to read with pictures.Here is the link to the website.http://readwithpic.github.io/
Wow. That's really impressive :3. Thanks for sharing this, so much.
Joshua wrote: "Does anyone else find this book extremely difficult to follow or am I just a complete idiot? Its very well written but for some reason I'm having the hardest time getting through it. The subject ma..."No buddy, you are not alone. I too wanted to love this so much, but it just proved way too indulgent for my taste. The central character is so loquacious, I mean he just doesn't stop talking! While I might have enjoyed in a more leisurely age, probably. Not now, though. :)
Not sure what you mean by indulgent, could you elaborate? Also, I don't understand what else a first person narrator does, besides talking? I'm not being a smart alec, I just want to understand your 'take' better.
Constant rationalizing involves a lot of talking to oneself, to the invisible witnesses, etc. In that way, HH is like anyone who rationalizes anything, but he has more talking to do than most.
Joshua wrote: "Does anyone else find this book extremely difficult to follow or am I just a complete idiot? Its very well written but for some reason I'm having the hardest time getting through it. The subject ma..."Joshua, imo, many current books (Gone Girl for example) are written with a "page-turner" attribute in mind by the author. Now, I liked Gone Girl very much, and I read it in one day. But one just can't approach "Lolita" as a page-turner beach read. This one takes time, so I'd recommend to anyone new to this book to just slowly get used to a different kind of writing. I'm working through "War and Peace" and Updike's "Rabbit" books right now, and they have to be approached the same way.
Laura wrote: "I agree with Chris, it is useful to remember that the narrator is not impartial, because it's Humbert himself. So, naturally, he will give you his version of the story and ignore the rest.Now, th..."
Laura, great point. "Just say no" to whatever one is reading if one just doesn't like it.
Scott wrote: "Andrea wrote: "When I first started it I didn't get what was happening so much because I was so caught up in the language. It's gorgeous, lyrical and funny, but a bit of a show all on its own. Afte..."Scott, I so agree, I found parts of it laugh-out-loud funny.
Andrea wrote: "When I first started it I didn't get what was happening so much because I was so caught up in the language. It's gorgeous, lyrical and funny, but a bit of a show all on its own. After I got used to..."Andrea, yes, so true, Nabokov's writing is "a show all on its own", and for me Lolita might be the most beautifully written novel I've ever read.
Nell, Felix, wow! Performance art (I suppose, or at least hope), right here on goodreads. Nice job!
I too had trouble reading this at first, but read it slowly and really soak it up. If you don't understand a reference, look up some of the background behind it. A lot of his references have to do with historical lore, nature, or Nabokov's personal hobby of collecting Lepidoptera. Don't put it down though! This is now my number 1 favorite book and I have read it ten times at least. Give it a chance!
Rebecca K-G wrote: "Charles wrote: "Joshua wrote: "Does anyone else find this book extremely difficult to follow or am I just a complete idiot? Its very well written but for some reason I'm having the hardest time get..."I loved this book from the first few words. Hard to follow? I have read it five times in forty five years and never thought that. Delicious prose, hilarious and thrillingly erotic. Nabokov actually wrote a delightful little poem summing up the story which is published in the American Library volume "American Poetry.
Hello! Original Poster here!I wrote this thread a little over a year ago and I had just started to read for pleasure.
I recently read again this month and it was SO much easier to read and enjoy!
As dense as this book can be, it is a fascinating and beautifully crafted story.
Just goes to show; Keep reading! Your mind will grow and improve, and you may even enjoy books that were a chore to read at one point.
Mitch wrote: "Joshua wrote: "Does anyone else find this book extremely difficult to follow or am I just a complete idiot? Its very well written but for some reason I'm having the hardest time getting through it...."oh god, i kept picking it up and putting it back down for a year.. and finally finished it. my mind kept wandering and i had to re-read passages lol...didn't flow well enough for me..
If you like Lolita, you'll just love Pale Fire: same erudition and hyper-driven academic excess, same footnotes and obscure references, pretentious linguistic loop-the-loops and loads of punning, pruning, preening throughout.Also a long and decent poem, smack dab in the middle of this gorgeous orchid.
I love the style (occasionally), love to search for definitions, revel in the bookish and preposterous exaggeration -- both author and protagonist.
V. N. writes genius, but he also slaves hard over crafting it, bringing all together, tweaking the meters, pushing the data-bank and its vast, mesmerizing, sometimes superfluous content.
H.H. is lovable and hateful, confident and conflicted, suave and awkward, merciless and forgiving... miserable beyond expression, too; he fairly reeks of childhood trauma, middle age anxiety, consuming envy for persons he reads as more accomplished, intense jealousy for the one "thing" he has known all along he may never have -- never once experience.
He and Lo are perfect for one another: spiritual twins; calculating and oblivious, deceiving and self-deceiving -- in spite of pleasure,
dead to pleasure.
All the pleasure is the reader's, I think.
This is the sort of work I do not read straight through or in a linear fashion, either.
Start at the end, if you like; dwell in the middle; pull it apart, sew it back together, create a monster, bid it speak.
BTW: In the USA we say "bumble" bee. I believe the English have it as "humble"... with all the humble(r) bumble(r) goes with that. Works either way.
Also: Umber -- as in brown or burnt; as in a "yellowish-brown", sienna -- is a boy's name in French, meaning "shade".... or "shady", I suppose. (Umbrella, for example.)
V.N. very probably meant these -- as a host of variations.
SWB
There are many laugh out loud moments in this novel, but you have to have an excellent vocabulary to understand them as well as the overall parody of America in the 60s. Like many great novels, the plot itself is not as important as the way the novel is written and the beautiful use of the English language. The utter idiocy of many of the characters is not described so much as illustrated. Case in point: Dolores, flirting with Humbert, says, "I love the French tongue." Wry observations and beautiful, melodious English - only two reasons this novel ranks among the greatest works if fiction in the world.
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It is difficult. I found the Annotated edition very useful. Lolita is a book to to read and reread.