Hello all,
I’ve decided to read Lolita due to morbid curiosity. I’m about half way through and I have some thoughts and want to discuss them.
My biggest thought and something that is confusing me, is how come in the discussions I’ve seen some people say Humbert Humbert comes off as charismatic or charming? It’s made clear from the foreword that he’s insane, and then from Humbert’s own admission that he’s a pedophile. How do people not see that he’s trying to trick the reader? I understand that he’s speaking eloquently with beautiful prose, but he’s coming off as a condescending narcissist who likes to sprinkle in his French to sound/feel superior to the reader.
I’ve also noticed that at a lot of times when Dolores she doesn’t sound like a child, it’s clearly an adult writing what they think a child might say; I don’t know if that’s intentional on Nabokov’s part or not, though I assume it is intentional because it gives me further reason to distrust Humbert.
Overall I think it’s been an interesting read so far, my one complaint is that I don’t feel good reading it. It feels disturbing and gross; I feel bad for Dolores, especially with her fate being spelled out in the foreword.
by stingray20201
13 Comments
Some people are very easily fooled, have lower standards for what is likable, or (in more extreme cases) just straight up don’t dislike abusers. A lot of people are also borderline illiterate.
I found Dolores pretty accurately portrayed though, she’s 12 not 5. By 12 you can communicate pretty clearly.
A lot of readers are legitimately unintelligent and can’t analyze literature beyond face value. They can’t even fathom the idea of an unreliable narrator, reading between the lines, etc.
You’re coming in to the story with information that the characters in the book don’t have. You know not to trust Humbert but they don’t. Humbert is everything Charlotte wants to be – educated, urbane, good looking – so she’s easily fooled by him. Humbert IS a condescending narcissist who thinks he’s better, smarter, craftier than everyone else.
The children in Nabokov’s work tend to be quite intelligent. (See Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle for more examples.) For my part, I’m always gratified when I see representations of precocious children, but that’s mostly because I happened to be one, once, and found the experience desperately frustrating and lonely. Incidentally, precocious children are an excellent target for pedophiles because they are desperately hungry for an adult to validate what they see as their unrecognized maturity, which is a kind of innocent stupidity that pedophiles are happy to exploit.
People think he’s charming for the same reason that serial killers get erotic fan mail in prison. People find anti-social behaviour strangely compelling.
Go get a literature degree. At several points in that (arguably pointless) endeavour you **will** meet someone who **has** to tell you how much they truly loved Lolita and how flawed but truly heroic every character is. Those are the people who generate a weary sigh from the whole class and the tutor every time they offer their input.
They’re obviously smarter than you, because Lolita is Literature and therefore it must have value, and seeing value where everyone else fails to must make them the most intelligent and skilled consumer of Literature in the room. It’s like a fight club poster in a uni dorm room, a piece of misinterpreted media being used to plaster over the hole where a personality would be.
I only got 1/6 of the way through the book before giving up. I agree with you and the things you pointed out were done intentionally by the author to demonstrate how Humbert (a pedophile/child rapist) is an unreliable narrator who romanticises his perversions.
A core theme of the book is about the capacity for the right cultural background or register to win over an audience who are easily awed by facile beauty and pedigree – that’s what HH is trying to do in his letter to the jury, after all. In the story he’s handsome, educated, sophisticated, and quite vain, and in the text he’s a very elegant, allusive, and self-consciously pompous. It’s up to the reader to wonder how much is him trying to present himself in the best light, to genuinely express something he thinks is true, or to lie opportunistically, but he is trying to be charming and expressive and a touch superior, very consciously. On some readers, if they’re not really up to the task, it really does work.
As for the children’s language, I couldn’t say how much of that is just that a typical teenager in the 40s lived a different life and talked very differently, particularly a smart, deliberately rebellious one who reads a lot of gossip mags – Nabokov had a child and was around children closer to that time, and I just kind of assume he’d know their lingo better than I would.
As for it making you feel gross and bad – good? It’s a story about a bad man and the tragedies he causes. That’s the best way it can make you feel. You feeling any which way is a literary effect an author can play with.
So unfortunately people do take it as a love story some times. I think a few weeks ago reddit removed a post where someone was saying “OK HH is bad buuuuut…” and then entirely missed the point. So it happens
You picking up on Dolores using word that are above the level of a child her age is a good catch. Remember that this is an autobiography of a pedophile so the book is full of excuses, careful rephrasings and other manipulation techniques.
If you have not yet read the foreword. Basically the point of the book (in my opinion) is can you find all the tricks HH uses and piece together a more objective
> How do people not see that he’s trying to trick the reader?
Everyone sees that. It’s the explicit reason everyone considers the book a masterpiece – it’s a consummate example of the unreliable narrator.
I went into Lolita not knowing at all what the story was about, and I won’t lie, it’s been a few years since I’ve read it (but I’d like to give it another go). I was studying for the GRE and google said it was “a love story” with language to expand your vocabulary.
My main hardship with the read was my internal desire as a reader for Humbert to “get the girl” per se but then reflecting that she’s a child and it’s horrific. It was indeed disturbing and gross. And I still find that read to be so incredibly challenging.
The tennis scenes of the story live in my mind 6+ years later and I can’t even remember the books I read last month.
I read it ages ago and found it disturbing. I think it is meant to be.
I don’t think Humbert Humbert is particularly charming, but I do think Nabokov’s prose is so brilliant, beautiful, and honestly intoxicating that it can at times make you forget how awful this human being is. Until the reality of it comes crashing back in.