Book Review: Lolita
Lolita is a daring read for any reader of any age. When a member of my book club challenged me to read this ‘one of the masterpieces of modern literature.’ I balked at taking this up.
I have finished reading this book written by Vladimir Nabokov. It is an achievement for my readership, and you will discover why it was an arduous task.
First, the subject. As controversial as it can get, at the heart of the plot is pedophilia, for the character Humbert who is in his mid-forties falling in obsessive lust with a 12-year-old girl Dolores, who he calls Lolita. By today’s standards, it is plain and simple child abuse. Despite the exalting wordplay, I could not recommend it if the reader is sensitive — which I am, so you can understand why it became a challenge.
Second, Lolita comes across as a memory and not a person. We see Lolita through the obsessed, lustful filter of Humbert’s eyes. The protagonist talks more about his feelings and amorous escapades with Lolita, rather than her personality or feelings. We get to know her physical attributes through the jaundiced eye of her lustful stepdad, Humbert.
Third, the flow. I fell off the reading wagon many a time as the flow changed abruptly, between long narratives and abrupt, obscure twists which I had to go back and read. I could attribute this to the subject itself, but the flow definitely stagnated and turned away from me as a reader.
The story is simple. The protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he kidnaps and sexually abuses after becoming her stepfather, and her mother Charlotte’s controversial death. He calls her Lolita. They travel across the length and breadth of the US. In the end, she escapes his guardianship with the help of Clare Quilty, a playwright who has been following them. After losing her, he suffers from depravity and alcohol. On receiving a letter seeking monetary assistance, he reaches Dolores in a decrepit household. He gives her the money left with him and learns about Quilty. He confronts and kills Quilty, and is arrested. Dolores dies of childbirth. In the end, Humbert confesses that he is in love with Lolita and asks for his memoir to be published after their death.
The moment in which Humbert comes upon the sunbathing Lo explodes on the reader. Humbert follows Charlotte, who is keen to show off and get him as a tenant, but he is disinterested as they pass the dining hall into the backyard lawn. I have never seen a finer piece of writing — combining the description of Lolita the nymphet, his memories of his childhood love Annabel, and the revelation of his obsessive lust towards both.
From there on, the eloquent wordplay combined with the lust-obsessed unreliability of the narrator cloaks the perversity of the plot but exposes the reader to multilingual double entendres and the vistas of the American town and countryside.
The book introduces me to the masterful Nobakovian writing method — his intimate knowledge of the other arts like music and theatre, his obsession with soaking the deeper feelings and descriptions in French, albeit through the protagonist, about the game of tennis, the American landscape, while sticking to the point of view of the unreliable narrator.
Despite the eloquence, erudition, and ephemeral awe that the author exhibits, in this day and age, many readers would wish that this story be untold, unheard, unread, and unseen.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2023
