Nabokov

I finally read Nabokov’s Lolita a few weeks ago. I wasn’t going to write anything at all about it – what can I possibly add to everything that has already been said about that book – but my friend S.G. asked me to trade comments, so I obliged.

It was a bit of an accident that I read it when I did. It had been on my list for years, but for some reason I just couldn’t get around to it. A couple of months ago, my father asked me whether I had ever read any Nabokov. He was rediscovering his Russian books then, and was absolutely blown away by the sheer artistry of his language. He asked me how his English prose compared. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be of any help. A little later, however, on the way to New York to visit my parents as a matter of fact, I left a book on a train, and ended up with nothing to read. So I walked down to the local Borders and picked up a copy of Lolita. If not now, then when, right?

It took a few pages to gain a full (as full as I could, anyhow) appreciation for Nabokov’s writing, but relatively quickly it became obvious that his English was every bit as idiosyncratic and brilliant as his Russian, at least on my father’s report. This was not just beautiful language, this was utterly unique, multilayered prose sparkling with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns that kept me marveling at how someone could come up with something like that. Here’s a mild example. Humbert has just been talking to Lolita’s mother, whom he cannot stand, but whom he pretends to love, and he goes to the refrigerator to make some drinks:

I set out two glasses… and opened the refrigerator. It roared at me viciously while I removed the ice from its heart. (p. 102)

I couldn’t choose the most impressive of Nabokov’s linguistic devices, but if I had to, I might have to go with the pun. These are not the lame puns you and I would make (well, I would…). This is punning at stratospheric heights. My personal favorite, if indeed I could pick one, is probably Humbert’s casual statement that while traveling through rural Alabama, he and Lolita saw a museum of guns and violins. In a three-word pun, Nabokov encapsulates his entire view of the rural South.

This actually brings me to the one aspect of the novel that I feel I could say something about. It has been written that an important theme of Lolita is America seen through the eyes of a European. I would adjust that a bit by saying that it is the “inner,” for lack of a better word, America, the cultural heartland that needs not be in the heart. And the eyes need not be European. Those of an urban Northeasterner would suffice. Large chunks of the book are dedicated to two road trips around the country Humbert and Lolita take. Nabokov’s eye for the roadside tourist trap, the beyond-tacky gift shop, the small-town soda fountain, is razor-sharp. Thing is, I have seen plenty of these places personally. In Arizona, in rural Virginia, in Michigan, just about everywhere my travels have taken me over the last twenty years. The places certainly changed since the early 1950s, but not nearly as much as you might expect, and not in any ways that are germane to Nabokov’s observations. And let me tell you, the museum of guns and violins is no figment of his imagination. Not the idea of it, anyway. I do have to ding him for getting Phoenix streets wrong – Seventh and Central both run north-south and do not cross – but that’s just the nit-picker in me.

As amazing as the novel is, I did think the story sagged a bit towards the end, and turned noticeably darker (the amount of wit throughout most of the book was another shock to me) but the ending, both with respect to Lolita’s fate and Humbert’s final act, is priceless.

Another friends who recently read it said that though enjoyable, it did not carry a fundamental revelation about the human condition for him. I disagree vehemently. You cannot possess another human being, and the harder you try, the harder both you and the object of your attempted possession fall.