I am well aware that this book is a great and esteemed work, and has been reviewed by great and esteemed people. I made sure not to consider any secondary sources before getting through the book myself, so it remains an account of someone like me reading it recreationally for the first time in 2013.
Being a Literature student, I had just about lost touch with
being interested in books I wasn't obliged to read, so I started taking
out three books on a fortnightly basis from the local library after not being
able to afford the bus fare to university (#studentlife). I firstly picked up
The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus, Accaboria by Michela Murgia, and The
Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp by Eva Rice. On a second trip, I came across
Lolita. I'd been hoping to read the book for a while- I've noticed that I lean
towards books written 1920-1960 as I enjoy fiction when it is well-written and
rich but also not too heavily reliant on adjectives and over-explanation.
However, Lolita does often fall in to this trap; which I assume to be due to
the mind-set of the obsessive and somewhat classically educated first person
perspective of the main character (the word protagonist, I feel, wouldn't be
the term).
In other reviews Nabokov is hailed for enabling us to 'empathise'
with the state of mind of a paedophile- but I do not share this view. It is
made clear that Humbert views himself as a monster through various comparisons,
despite referring to copious amounts of permitted incest and paedophilia in
literature or as a past or present cultural norm to us- the reader- the 'jury'
throughout. I was drawn to the unusual psychological viewpoint of the narrator
when choosing this book, but I would be lying if I said the deluded and heavily
eroticised language concerning children didn't make me uncomfortable and I did
not achieve that 'couldn't put it down' experience because of this.
By a third of the way through, you begin to treat it as a study,
which is apt as it is presented as a kind of testimony or court statement,
appealing directly to you, the reader, for sympathy or forgiveness- of which he
gets none. In terms of voice, the narrator's almost sociopathic personality is
portrayed excellently- the way his character is full of misogyny and contempt
for anyone except his love and the manipulation and extortion he uses to
'satisfy' his needs at the expense of his underage companion's happiness. This
wouldn't have worked in a perspective other than first-person. I do wonder,
however, how neuroscientifically sound the inference throughout that the loss
of his childhood partner Annabel was in cultivating his elicit sexual preferences.
This book is rightly a classic, but one that mustn't be left for
light reading on the train. It is a masterpiece of character development; there
to be studied and admired, but psychologically exhausting for any supposed
correctly functioning person. I highly recommend for anyone wanting to be
challenged in both a literary and psychological sense.
That was my first impression, what was yours? Let me know in the
comments or
tweet me @bakebakebaker
BAKER
xoxoxo
