21Nov

My Favorite Books: Nabokov’s LOLITA

• Saved in: Favorite Books, Writers
• by Chris Orcutt
• with 4 Comments

When­ev­er I’m in the mid­dle of reread­ing it, the nov­el Loli­ta casts such a spell on me that I often for­get I have it on my per­son.

Giv­en its sub­ject mat­ter (a pedophile pin­ing away for a pre-pubes­cent girl), this isn’t a very good idea. Giv­en its sub­ject mat­ter, the book should have a plain brown paper wrap­per for a cov­er. How­ev­er, like I said, the prose entrances me so much that I tend to for­get I’m car­ry­ing it.

Like the two times I was inter­view­ing for teach­ing jobs—first, 12 years ago, at a high school in Freeport, Maine, then six years ago at a col­lege in Man­hat­tan. I must be lucky because both times the first peo­ple to notice the book were Vladimir Nabokov fans, exclaim­ing what a great book Loli­ta is and nod­ding approv­ing­ly at me, as if to say, “Any­body who appre­ci­ates well-craft­ed sen­tences by a Russ­ian mas­ter of the Eng­lish lan­guage, about a sick man with a (lit­er­al) hard-on for lit­tle girls, is all right by me—yes, sir!”

(By the way, the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of “Nabokov”—Nuh-BO-kov or NAB-uh-kov—depends on two things: 1. the super­cil­ious­ness of the speak­er and 2. the weath­er. Adden­dum, 12/9/2013: The cor­rect pro­nun­ci­a­tion of his last name is to be found in his book Strong Opin­ions, in which he clear­ly states that it’s Nuh-BOK-ov.)

Yes­ter­day after­noon, a neigh­bor called to tell me that an old friend of mine, a Catholic priest, was vis­it­ing in town and giv­ing the Mass that night. So I went. How­ev­er, as I opened the church doors I noticed that my paper­back copy of Loli­ta was stick­ing out of my jack­et pock­et. And to make mat­ters worse, this edi­tion has a par­tic­u­lar­ly racy pic­ture on the cov­er: a girl lick­ing an orange Pop­si­cle. (The nov­el has inspired a wide assort­ment of cov­er art.)

I was hold­ing it in my hands, won­der­ing what to do with it, remark­ing to myself that the blonde trol­lop on the cov­er looked noth­ing like the nymphet hero­ine, Miss Dolores Haze (Loli­ta, Lola, Lo), when I heard foot­steps com­ing up the walk­way. Voic­es were approach­ing from inside. There was no time. I could­n’t leave the nov­el in my pock­et with­out the risk of at least the title glar­ing out to the world in hot pink—LOLITA—so I did the next best thing. I shoved it down my pants.

An old cou­ple shuf­fled up the stairs as I held the door open for them. “Why, thank you, young man!” the woman chirped.

They beamed at me, appar­ent­ly unaware that their bene­fac­tor was con­ceal­ing a genius but pro­fane piece of lit­er­a­ture down his pants. You nev­er know who you’re deal­ing with. Which, iron­i­cal­ly, is pret­ty much the sto­ry of Hum­bert Hum­bert, the sad sack pro­tag­o­nist of Loli­ta.

I sat and stood and kneeled my way through the Mass, con­cerned with every move­ment that the book would slide down my pant leg at any moment, and I was espe­cial­ly ner­vous when, at the end, my priest friend greet­ed me at the exit. But lo (pun intend­ed) and behold, the worst nev­er hap­pened. The object of my would-be ignominy was wedged snug­ly between my pubis bone and the band of my Calvin Klein box­er shorts. (“Noth­ing gets between me and my Calvins! That is, except a well-worn copy of Lo-Lee-Ta.”)

I emerged from the church unscathed.

Lest you think I love this nov­el sole­ly for the mem­o­rable sit­u­a­tions it has put me in over the years, allow me to talk about the writ­ing, because as far as I’m con­cerned, were it not for the genius-drip­ping sen­tences on EVERY page, this would just be anoth­er so-so, semi-smut­ty nov­el.

As I’ve men­tioned before, I keep a note­book of great writ­ing exam­ples, and my favorite lines from Loli­ta take up sev­er­al pages. How­ev­er, it’s not the sex­u­al lines that fas­ci­nate me. In fact, when you get right down to it, there’s very lit­tle “sex” in Loli­ta at all. (In one of the book’s first reviews, the British nov­el­ist Kings­ley Amis remarked, “Where’s all the sex, then?”)

In the 53 years since its pub­li­ca­tion, some ini­tial­ly dis­ap­point­ed read­ers have come to under­stand that what real­ly makes the nov­el a mas­ter­piece, what makes it so com­pelling­ly orig­i­nal and re-read­able, has very lit­tle to do with sex. Yes, Nabokov does a great job of using sex­u­al ten­sion to devel­op and main­tain nar­ra­tive dri­ve, but it’s real­ly the mas­ter­ful use of two oth­er writ­ing ele­ments that make Loli­ta so damn hyp­not­ic:

1. Voice

2. Lan­guage (dic­tion, sen­tence vari­ety and imagery)

The fact is, whether you like the sub­ject mat­ter or not, if you have half a brain, you can’t keep your­self from putting down the nov­el every few sen­tences and shak­ing your head in awe. It does­n’t mat­ter what the nar­ra­tor, Hum­bert Hum­bert, is talk­ing about; the pre­ci­sion, artistry and seduc­tive qual­i­ty of his sto­ry­telling will keep you inter­est­ed regard­less of what’s hap­pen­ing plot-wise.

Here, then, are just a few of the sen­tences that have left me with my metaphor­i­cal tongue hang­ing out. The effect of any of Nabokov’s best sen­tences on me is not unlike wit­ness­ing a stun­ning woman (or man, depend­ing on your ori­en­ta­tion) do some­thing com­plete­ly unself­con­scious, like smile in the sun or hold open a door for some­one. Nabokov did a lot of his writ­ing on note­cards with a #2 pen­cil, and his ele­gant crafts­man­ship shows itself in every sen­tence:

The dimmest of my pol­lu­tive dreams was a thou­sand times more daz­zling than all the adul­tery the most vir­ile writer of genius or the most tal­ent­ed impo­tent might imag­ine.

Anoth­er time a red-haired school girl hung over me in the metro and a rev­e­la­tion of axil­lary rus­set I obtained remained in my blood for weeks.

A lit­tle fur­ther, the Haze house, a white-frame hor­ror, appeared, look­ing dingy and old, more gray than white—the kind of place you know will have a rub­ber tube affix­able to the tub faucet in lieu of a show­er.

Present­ly, the lady herself—sandals, maroon slacks, yel­low silk blouse, squar­ish face, in that order—came down the steps, her index fin­ger still tap­ping upon her cig­a­rette.

Heat rip­ple still with us; a most favon­ian week.

So I just grunt­ed and stretched my limbs non­con­com­i­nant­ly (le mot juste) and present­ly went up to my room.

Her adorable pro­file, part­ed lips, warm hair were some three inch­es from my bared eye­tooth; and I felt the heat of her limbs through her rough tomboy clothes. All at once I knew I could kiss her throat or the wick of her mouth with per­fect impuni­ty.

 

For God’s sake, even the man’s sen­tence frag­ments are exquis­ite:

…with the mon­key­ish nim­ble­ness that was so typ­i­cal of that Amer­i­can nymphet…

…and that first impres­sion (a very nar­row human inter­val between two tiger heart­beats) car­ried the clear impli­ca­tion…

…the trag­ic eyes of unsuc­cess­ful blondes…

 

Loli­ta was so suc­cess­ful that it eclipsed all of Nabokov’s oth­er work, a fact that Play­boy mag­a­zine con­front­ed him with in a 1964 inter­view. What’s inter­est­ing about this snip­pet (tak­en from the very begin­ning of the inter­view) is the curios­i­ty with which the author seems to have viewed his own writ­ing. There’s a degree of dis­tance and self-exam­i­na­tion here that you don’t see in many oth­er great writ­ers (as much as I love his work, Hem­ing­way comes to mind). Not to men­tion Nabokov’s incred­i­bly thought­ful and elo­quent answer.

Play­boy: With the Amer­i­can pub­li­ca­tion of Loli­ta in 1958, your fame and for­tune mush­roomed almost overnight from high repute among the lit­er­ary cognoscenti—which you bad enjoyed for more than 30 years—to both acclaim and abuse as the world-renowned author of a sen­sa­tion­al best­seller. In the after­math of this cause cele­bre, do you ever regret hav­ing writ­ten Loli­ta?

Nabokov: On the con­trary, I shud­der ret­ro­spec­tive­ly when I recall that there was a moment, in 1950, and again in 1951, when I was on the point of burn­ing Hum­bert Hum­bert’s lit­tle black diary. No, I shall nev­er regret Loli­ta. She was like the com­po­si­tion of a beau­ti­ful puzzle—its com­po­si­tion and its solu­tion at the same time, since one is a mir­ror view of the oth­er, depend­ing on the way you look. Of course she com­plete­ly eclipsed my oth­er works—at least those I wrote in Eng­lish: The Real Life of Sebas­t­ian Knight, Bend Sin­is­ter, my short sto­ries, my book of rec­ol­lec­tions; but I can­not grudge her this. There is a queer, ten­der charm about that nymphet.

 

Now, over 50 years lat­er, while the debate about the rel­a­tive “dis­gust­ing­ness” of Hum­bert Hum­bert’s pedophil­ia rages on, Nabokov’s son is about to release the author’s final, unfin­ished novel—a work that the mas­ter on his deathbed request­ed be burned.

The book, The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra, is due for pub­li­ca­tion next year, and it’s said to con­tain “all the sex” left out of Loli­ta. I’ll be lin­ing up to buy it, but not for the sex, and not for the mem­o­rable sit­u­a­tions I might find myself in with the book. I’ll be buy­ing it for all of the oth­er stuff that moti­vat­ed me to write over 2,000 words here on one of my favorite books:

 

Loli­ta, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue tak­ing a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

 

• Share on: Twitter
• Pinterest
• Facebook
• Google+