Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov’s infamous Lolita is a book I had taken great pains to avoid reading. While I knew it was on nearly every “100 greatest novels” list ever created, I had the feeling it would just try to invite my sympathy for a misogynistic child rapist. But as it turns out, Lolita proved to be much, much more than a tale told by a predator. It's a master study on attraction and the dark underside of love.

Humbert Humbert, a brilliant member of the European literati, begins his bizarre fairytale from inside prison walls. He recounts a fatal childhood encounter with a young girl named Annabel (a reference to Poe’s Annabel Lee, one of his many erudite jokes) and his resulting obsession with the ephemeral beauty of those adolescents he terms “nymphets.” Although it is certainly a sexual perversion, Humbert protests that it is also a platonic one - he longs to understand the strange cusp that lies between childhood innocence and the cynicism of adulthood.

By the time you finish the first few chapters, it is already evident that he’s an unreliable narrator, and the more you read the more obvious his neuroticism becomes. Yet like all madmen, his thoughts produce a kind of prophetic insight. Lines of startling beauty and eloquence jump out at the reader, and I often found myself tasting the words aloud just to feel their shapes. I was surprised to find that as much as I wanted to hate him, I related to him in many ways. The whole book feels personal, like a confession to a close friend. While his actions are deplorable, there is no attempt to hide that fact from the reader - Humbert frankly admits to his corruption, and simply wants the audience to hear the whole story.

After a series of incredible coincidences, he is left the sole guardian and stepfather of lovely 13 year old Dolores Haze, who is his living idol. They immediately become lovers and embark on a cross-country road trip. Humbert claims that it is Lolita who initiates this state of affairs, and is shocked to discover that she has already had many sexual experiences of her own. However, despite her initial curiosity and attraction to Humbert, it also soon becomes clear that Lolita is miserable trapped as his “pubescent concubine.” Humbert chooses to remain oblivious to her plight. He idealizes and despises her at the same time, and he becomes insanely paranoid that she will be taken from him. In moving from hotel to hotel across the North American continent, he desperately clings to Lolita with promises of new clothes and new attractions. As they wander, Humbert’s observations become a commentary on American consumerism that mirrors deToqueville in its poignancy. Eventually, even the gifts and half-hearted threats from Humbert are not enough to keep Lolita at his side, and she successfully executes her escape. 

Dominique Swain as Lolita in the 1997 adaptation 

Over the course of the book, Humbert blames his corruption on any number of things - the outlandish coincidences set up by McFate (his nickname for the workings of chance), the episode with Annabel by the sea, Lolita’s strange beauty. He peppers everything with anagrams, literary references, and puns to divert the reader from the naked reality of his feelings. And yet in the end, visiting a deeply cynical and now married Lolita, he is forced to acknowledge that he alone is responsible for the destruction that ruined both their lives.

It’s a story about human connection, and how easily we taint the memories of the very people we claim to adore. In perhaps the darkest irony of all, Humbert does discover the secret to nymph-hood, the real reason for the dichotomy separating our naïveté and our hardness. As Humbert learns, it isn't age that makes us cynical adults: it is only the cruelty, carelessness, and apathy we invoke in the name of love.

-Claire