11/16/2005 11:20 AM
Posted by VeggieSteph

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita. Looo…lee…ta. Lolita. Object of desire and obsession. Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece is one of the best stories I have read all year. Humbert Humbert’s obsession with Dolores Haze is intriguing, thought provoking, and terribly disturbing, all mixed up in one book. How fortuitous and serendipitous it was that December’s Playboy has an article looking back on Lolita, because it’s always nice to see what others see in such an interesting work of art.

Humbert Humbert is a European who can not forget his first true love, a young girl who haunts his every relationship from his pre-teen years on. He tries to have relationships with women his age, but can’t love them because of his true love’s ghost. One day, while moving about in America, he stumbles upon his new true love, Lolita. He rents a room from Charlotte Haze, her mother, and embarks on the obsession that frames the novel. Over time, he marries Charlotte to stay close to Lolita, and ends up being her guardian when Charlotte dies. This turn of events is where the story enters heavily into the pedophilia and abuse realm, and it’s where it gets really icky. Later, Lolita escapes using H.H.’s nemesis, the shadowy Clare Quilty, and Humbert looks for her over the next few years. When he finds her later, he reflects on the damage he and Quilty have done to her, and ends up confronting Quilty and destroying himself.

You could read Lolita as a love story, a simple love story that is simply misunderstood. When you read more deeply, you realize this isn’t a story of love, but the destruction love can wreck on people. The language is the key to all the secrets the novel has to tell. Humbert uses elegant, descriptive language to mask the truth and lead the reader astray. Once you look closer at the way he describes things, you realize the desperate straits Lolita is in, alone and at the hands of a pedophile, with no way out and very little contact with kids her own age. The true story you uncover is disturbing, and the shadows weaved over his narrative is an interesting study of truth vs. fiction. It’s so well done that even though you don’t get Lolita’s point of view, you know what she is feeling. Humbert tries his best to pull the wool over our eyes, but the truth appears, and he is not as suave or clever as he might think.

Nabokov creates Humbert as a cultured European that attracts women without even trying. Humbert embodies the tension between European and American cultures, between the Old World values and the new. You can see this clearly in how Humbert describes and daydreams during his and Lolita’s trek across America and his comparisons between the Old-World hotels and off the road motels he and Lolita travel through. His European character also allows others to see the side he wants them to see. They don’t see the pedophiliac nature of Humbert, because he is so suave, so well educated, and so cultured.

Lolita ends up being a discussion of obsession, pedophilia, psychiatry, and a clash of cultures, all wrapped up in a neat package that looks like a simple love story. You could start the story thinking it will be titillating, like another version of the Red Shoe Diaries. Its notorious history and book banning might lead you to think so. It’s not that way at all. The characters are compelling, and the story is heartbreaking. There is definitely more than meets the eye in this package. I think this is must reading for anybody who considers him or herself well read, especially those who love the study of language. It is truly a masterpiece.