Lolita

Heart, head--everything.

Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita,

Lolita. Repeat till the page is full, printer.

Seldom few books reach Lolita(1955)'s level of infamy among even the most uninitiated of readers. Many a person would seem to think of Nabokov's novel as a erotic work presenting an illicit romance between a pubescent girl and her middle-aged guardian. However, this is a very common misconception, and turning the pages of the novel will reveal a much darker tale about a mentally disturbed man and his manipulation and molestation of a defenceless 12 year old girl.

Nabokov brilliantly answers the novel's horrific subject matter with the dialect of the most beautiful prose ever written in the English language. The main character and narrator, Mr Humbert Humbert, is a well educated, cultured and intelligent man who's exquisite writings can't help but allure the reader to sympathize with him and insert themselves in the story in his position. However, this is where the genius of the novel comes into play. H.H. is not a reliable narrator, not only with the possession by his monomaniacal attraction to Lolita skewing her behaviour towards her in his mind and thus the novel, but the book goes out of it's way to state explicitly that he spent multiple stays in various sanatoriums around the country. We must acknowledge that not everything in the novel is as Humbert said it was, and simple innocuous actions taken by Lolita might be interpreted by Humbert, and by extension the novel, as flirtatious and sexual. Even with this glamour of a brilliant, cultured writer, the rot of his manipulations seep through his biased lense of the novel's events and we can see his monstrous behaviour towards an innocent girl and the effects of his awful actions on her life.

The narrative presented by Nabokov is thrilling, with it's honest depictions of suburban Americana in what was arguably the greatest period in that nation's history interwoven into it's settings. The first half is a brilliantly paced slice of life, for lack of a better term. We see Humbert try to integrate himself into the home life of one Charlotte Haze, and her daughter, Dolores, to whom he gives the titular moniker Lolita. We see him struggle both externally and internally to keep his insatiable lust under control as to not get noticed by the residents of his small, suburban town. This character study is brilliant, and makes Humbert all the more compelling protagonist. The book itself even seem to bend to his mental state, as some parts ring are as clear as the Atlantic, while parts where Humbert is more stressed come off as more fragmentary and erratic.

Lolita as a whole is a seminal masterpiece, one which not even the late Stanley Kubrick could bring justice on the big screen. It completely deserves it's spot as one of the greatest books of the 20th century, and has sparked in me what will indubitably become a life-long love affair with Nabokov's work.