Lolita
By Vladimir Nabokov
Since Reading Lolita in Tehran has been making the rounds of American book clubs
lately, I thought it might be interesting to have my own book group tackle the
actual article. While nearly half a century has passed since the initial appearance
of Lolita, the novel has lost none of its strange powers in the intervening years.
This infamous tale of a European transplant who abducts his young stepdaughter
and transports her across America (for the darkest purposes imaginable) occupies
a unique place in modern literature. Routinely cited as one of the greatest American
novels of the twentieth century, Lolita takes one of the most abhorrent subjects
in our culture ‚ sexual abuse ‚ and renders it in astonishingly beautiful
prose. By any measure, the protagonist Humbert Humbert is a monster. Yet in Nabokov's
capable hands, the reader is lulled into a complex narrative that is anything
but two-dimensional, and enveloped by images that linger in the mind and haunt
the soul. Here is Lolita playing tennis: "She would wait and relax for a
bar or two of white-lined time before going into the act of serving, and often
bounced the ball once or twice, or pawed the ground a little, always at ease,
always rather vague about the score, always cheerful as she so seldom was in
the dark life she led at home." In a culture whose sensibilities are so
thoroughly jaded by sensationalism, Lolita retains its extraordinary capacity
to engender both shock and awe. Neal Kane
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