On a Book Entitled Lolita

'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, you are my sin, my soul.'

'Offensive' can be used as a synonym of 'Unusual' wrote John Ray Jr. in the foreword to a book that's presentiments were only topped by the experience itself.

STF is full of roads and most of them aren't physical. There was a month in that reclusive office that began a reckless trail in search of the Great American novel. I raced through Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath', Ginsberg's 'Howl and other Poems' as well as a welcome return to old comrade Jack Kerouac. I was smashing the speed limits and devouring every novel in sight until I saw Lolita - I'm an intrepid driver I thought, I can handle anything - I pulled over
   'Where ya headed?'
   'The limits of your tolerance' she replied.
   'Hop in.'


Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. [sic] She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita'

A few days later with more pit stops and flat tyres than the average journey I was fuming. I had arrived at her destination - 'This is your stop isn't it? Get Out.' She left, I pulled the handbrake and began to ponder.

*            *            *

When the tale of a pedophilic step-father and his erotic exploits nabs a place in the top 10 of just about every "Best of The 20th Century" list one question pops up - Why? It bugged me. Where was the moral justice? I expected debase language chockful of foul four-letter profanities - Why is Humbert so darn educated? I wanted the creature exposed as the horrible and abject leper of morals that he should be.

"Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with" and play he does. His fine tuned lexis humbles you into grabbing the nearest dictionary because the ribald and solipsist Humbert has a capricious and jocular tongue that he uses as an expiatory rampart against your own inhibitions. He is challenging our inhibitions with prose and to top it off when English doesn't quite hit the mark he indulges in French - Oui, c'est ne pas bien.

So why was this book written? I hoped it wasn't catharsis but it was - only not of a kind I expected. As a young man Nabokov enjoyed sitting by a chess board and composing challenging scenarios. The clash in chess is of course not between black and white but ultimately it is of two minds. This is a principle he applied to his writing. 'The real clash is not the characters but in the author and the reader.' This book isn't about Dolores and Humbert it's about you and Vladimir Nabokov.

I've finished many books with the following reaction 'The End. Bad Book. Close.' or 'The End. Good Book. Close.' Lolita lingers and she waits for you to move the right pieces to escape her ostensible checkmate. Nabokov set himself a challenge in prose 'Can I make the reader identify with a pedophile?' Nabokov notably had an obsession with artistic immortality something you assume is the product of original art and he wrote that 'Artistic originality is the murder of convention - it is disgust.' Autonomous art thus becomes immortal because it has a life of its own.



Chapter 36: I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.