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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. Lolita 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:
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.Much has been made of Lolita 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 jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake
From Library Journal
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nabavoks disturbing masterpeice,
By Kerri (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Lolita (Paperback)
This is unarguably a one-of-a-kind book. It's a difficult read, the language and prose is gorgeous, but can get a bit mundane. In a sense, it is a love story...but Humbert does not actually love Lolita herself, but he loves her for the fact that she resembles his lost childhood love. He never gets to know the REAL inside Lolita, he constantly talks about her nubile and pubescent beauty. He speaks of how she tortures him, but she is just a young girl. Humbert morally corrupts the girl to the point where she sleeps with other men and becomes involved with child pornography. This is the kind of book that weeks after finishing it, you continue to cotemplate it. What makes it readable, despite the distrubing concept, is that Nabavok adds humor, but all of the humor is dark and eerie.It is a wonderful book, but it's definatly not meant to be read by everyone
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Brilliant "Sinister Memoir"!,
By
This review is from: Lolita (Hardcover)
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." With those famous opening lines, Nabokov begins a sordid tale told by Humbert Humbert, one of the most fascinating characters in all of American literature. Even many people who have never read this novel know the basic story here since the word "Lolita" has become a part of American culture in that that someone with a "Lolita complex" is attracted to very young girls.Published in 1955, this novel caused a storm of controversy; it is still provocative today even though there is not a four letter word in it. That is not to say that the book is not extremely erotic in many places. What Nabokov does with words is brilliant. As always he plays constant word games with the reader. Someone goes on a "honeymonsoon" to India. In seaching for Dolores aka Lolita and her run-away suitor, Humbert finds the name "Will Brown, Dolores, Colo." in a hotel register. Humbert and Dolores have breakfast in the "township of Soda, pop. 1001." There are allusions to Poe ("in a kingdom by the sea") and other writers throughout the book. You skim paragraphs at your peril. The book is wondrously satiric. Nabokov captures the vapidness of the motels in small and middle America in the 40's and 50's with great brilliance. Humbert, with all his perversions, is often a terribly funny character as well. The scene where he wrestles with Quilty comes to mind. "We rolled all over the floor, in each other's arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us." We cannot forget, however, that Humbert is ultimately guilty of an ugly sin. In his own words he has deprived a "girl-child" of her childhood. In their cross-country journey, she cries every night. The picture is not pretty. In an essay written in 1956 Nabokov writes about writing LOLITA. HE says that he is "neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and. . .. LOLITA has no moral in tow." He further denies the charge made by some readers that the novel is anti-American. Finally he says there are three subjects "utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned." Obviously the theme of this novel is one. The other two, in Nabokov's words, are: "a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106." A most interesting observation. I wonder just how much has changed in 47 years.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly written dirty joke?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Lolita (Paperback)
So much talent expended on such a filthy fetish! Nabokov writes better than almost anyone of the last century and what does he write about? The slobbering Humbert, middle aged seeker of female children, lusting and plotting to have the child Lolita. It is written with genius. Sentences flow like honey. Comical lines abound. It is amazingly fresh - I checked the copyright as I could barely believe it was written in 1954! But what is the purpose of all this carefully crafted writing? Some will have you believe it is a metaphor for the clashing of European and American cultures. That is utter nonsense. Much of this is a bit too real to be mere literary invention. The fact that Nabokov wrote another novel, "The Enchanter," on the same subject, suggests that this is auto-porn and has no other purpose than tittilation - of the author and anyone else who is a slave to this fetish. It is not a meditation on love. It is a well crafted dirty story for pedophiles.
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