Vladimir Nabokov’s well known book that was originally published in English and later translated into Russian by Nabokov himself, Lolita is a grotesque and nauseating piece of literature. The novel has been wrongly lauded for its prose, but this "beautiful writing" is nothing more than a thin veil used to disguise a deeply disturbing and morally bankrupt story. It’s a book that wallows in its own depravity, and its attempts to intellectualise the abuse of a child are nothing short of repulsive.
The protagonist, a middle-aged man who goes by the name Humbert Humbert, is not a tragic figure or a misunderstood anti-hero. He is a predator and a paedophile. Period. He is a loathsome and disgusting man who fixates on a twelve-year-old girl, who later becomes his stepdaughter. The book's central, unforgivable flaw is its insistence on framing his perverted obsession as a grand passion. What makes this piece very uncomfortable is that this is in the perspective of the paedophile and not the victim. I was essentially forced to sit through approximately eleven hours of Humbert Humbert waffling on about loving his stepdaughter and calling her several pet names including a "nymphette." WTF?? We are privy to his self-serving justifications and manipulative charm, but there is no genuine insight into his psyche, only endless, repetitive descriptions of his obsession. The book doesn't explore the horror of child abuse; it romanticizes it, using flowery language to make the unthinkable seem poetic.
The character of Lolita herself is a mere object and a prop for Humbert's narrative. We never get to know her as a person. She is defined solely by Humbert’s lecherous gaze, her voice and humanity completely erased. She is a the novel's failure to give her a voice or a soul is a profound moral and artistic failing. Nabokov’s so-called "magnum opus" is able to make the reader forget the victim and is seduced by the predator's self-pitying tale.
Jeremy Irons's narration doesn't make the experience any better because I learnt before listening to this audiobook that he starred in the 1997 film adaptation of the book playing the role of Humbert Humbert. I must say something positive about this book. Irons, an Academy Award winning actor who you might recognise for playing the role of Scar in The Lion King six years before his role in Lolita, was able to play a variety of roles by using his experiences as a voice actor to make the experience of listening to the audiobook slightly better. That doesn't make the book overall good by the way. I just thought Irons still had the ability to play a creepy man years after his film role.
The defenders of this book argue for its linguistic brilliance and complexity, but these are empty calories. They distract from the fact that the book is a hollow, ugly story that uses a child's suffering for cheap literary shock and aesthetic posturing. It's a testament not to the power of art, but to the perverse lengths some people will go to in order to find beauty in something truly horrifying. This is a book that deserves to be remembered as a cautionary tale of how easily we can be tricked into applauding the abominable.
How this book got published is a very good question. I saw a physical copy in a bookshop once. It's shocking that this is still available to the public. If Humbert Humbert was a real person, he would have definitely been in the Epstein Files. For sure.
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