Lolita, the first in an occasional series of literary posts..
I think Lolita may have been the first novel that totally and utterly blew me away. Obviously, before I read it, I’d read many other novels that I’d enjoyed and liked and I even had novels that I’d reread to pieces. But Lolita was something else. Every time I reread, I find more to think about but what I think the novel is really about, above all, is perspective. More than any other novel that I’ve read, I think the greatness of Lolita is difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t read it, I find it impossible to convey just how intense an experience reading it is.
I find myself horribly, helplessly, sucked into the perspective of Humbert. I even found myself feeling that Dolores was treating him unfairly at times and, well, I never thought I’d feel that way about an abused child and her abuser. It brings home to me the lies that you can tell yourself, the way that you can totally and utterly convince yourself that a situation is the way that you’re perceiving it.
Humbert loves Dolores, I think, but he doesn’t really see her. He thinks he does but he doesn’t and that, too, I find a disturbing instance of how much your perspective biases you even when you don’t think it does. I’m sure that Humbert is right that Dolores initiated sex with him, what I don’t think he sees is that she didn’t really mean it, she was playing with her sexuality in the way that young girls do with men that they think are totally safe. I even think she might have been doing it in order to confirm to herself that he was a nice, secure father figure. Except that, clearly, he wasn’t.
After that, Dolores becomes a very shady figure in the novel and that too reflects Humbert’s perspective. He really never stops to think about what she’s thinking and feeling and I think what’s horrifying about that is that, really, he’s not all that unusual in that.
When I first read the novel, I found the final third or so of the novel extremely bizarre. It didn’t seem to fit the tone and pace of the remainder of the novel at all. The more that I reread it, though, the more I like it. Even though I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. To me, it reads for a while as though Quilty is another aspect of Humbert - Humbert obviously intellectualises and idealises what he’s doing to Dolores but Quilty is a straightforward pornographer and abuser - but that obviously doesn’t quite fit with Dolores then telling Humbert that it was Quilty that she ran off with. I’m not sure that Humbert understands what is going on. He’s clearly going a bit insane with the motel registration aliases, I think that he half thinks that Quilty is something other than a real person, either the dark half of his own personality or some sort of other not-quite-a-normal-human person. I think, by this point, Humbert has retreated so much into his own head that it’s almost impossible to work out whether other people he talks about are real at all.
I go back and forth over whether or not Humbert means it when he wants Dolores back, even as a pregnant 17 year old. I think he thinks he means it. The main reason why I don’t think he really does is that he’s still calling her Lolita. As Humbert himself tells us, that’s not really her name. She calls herself Dolores, Dolly or Lola, but he doesn’t see her as herself still, she’s still Lolita, I think he’s still attracted to her for the 12 year old that he still sees in her, not for herself. But, as with almost everything in the novel, it’s not clear and that’s what makes Lolita such a compulsive read.
I find myself horribly, helplessly, sucked into the perspective of Humbert. I even found myself feeling that Dolores was treating him unfairly at times and, well, I never thought I’d feel that way about an abused child and her abuser. It brings home to me the lies that you can tell yourself, the way that you can totally and utterly convince yourself that a situation is the way that you’re perceiving it.
Humbert loves Dolores, I think, but he doesn’t really see her. He thinks he does but he doesn’t and that, too, I find a disturbing instance of how much your perspective biases you even when you don’t think it does. I’m sure that Humbert is right that Dolores initiated sex with him, what I don’t think he sees is that she didn’t really mean it, she was playing with her sexuality in the way that young girls do with men that they think are totally safe. I even think she might have been doing it in order to confirm to herself that he was a nice, secure father figure. Except that, clearly, he wasn’t.
After that, Dolores becomes a very shady figure in the novel and that too reflects Humbert’s perspective. He really never stops to think about what she’s thinking and feeling and I think what’s horrifying about that is that, really, he’s not all that unusual in that.
When I first read the novel, I found the final third or so of the novel extremely bizarre. It didn’t seem to fit the tone and pace of the remainder of the novel at all. The more that I reread it, though, the more I like it. Even though I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. To me, it reads for a while as though Quilty is another aspect of Humbert - Humbert obviously intellectualises and idealises what he’s doing to Dolores but Quilty is a straightforward pornographer and abuser - but that obviously doesn’t quite fit with Dolores then telling Humbert that it was Quilty that she ran off with. I’m not sure that Humbert understands what is going on. He’s clearly going a bit insane with the motel registration aliases, I think that he half thinks that Quilty is something other than a real person, either the dark half of his own personality or some sort of other not-quite-a-normal-human person. I think, by this point, Humbert has retreated so much into his own head that it’s almost impossible to work out whether other people he talks about are real at all.
I go back and forth over whether or not Humbert means it when he wants Dolores back, even as a pregnant 17 year old. I think he thinks he means it. The main reason why I don’t think he really does is that he’s still calling her Lolita. As Humbert himself tells us, that’s not really her name. She calls herself Dolores, Dolly or Lola, but he doesn’t see her as herself still, she’s still Lolita, I think he’s still attracted to her for the 12 year old that he still sees in her, not for herself. But, as with almost everything in the novel, it’s not clear and that’s what makes Lolita such a compulsive read.