Lolita

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  A beautifully written tragic romance. A lyrical, sensitive, darkly moving story, exploring what it means to be a victim of one's own impulses and desires, in which the roles of predator and prey are never as clearly defined as one might expect.

  The subject matter - which some might find distasteful - is handled articulately and intelligently, and the writer never resorts to baseness or shock tactics, yet without shying away from the more carnal aspects of the protagonist's relationship wi... (show more)

  A beautifully written tragic romance. A lyrical, sensitive, darkly moving story, exploring what it means to be a victim of one's own impulses and desires, in which the roles of predator and prey are never as clearly defined as one might expect.

  The subject matter - which some might find distasteful - is handled articulately and intelligently, and the writer never resorts to baseness or shock tactics, yet without shying away from the more carnal aspects of the protagonist's relationship with his nymphet.

  The book slips frequently into French, which may make parts of it less accessible for some, but on the whole a compelling, gorgeously-crafted and highly readable story. (show less)

   

  by Sarah Fardy on Jan 23, 2008 at 09:29PM

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  Brilliantly and intricately crafted, profoundly moving, hideous; I haven't been so shocked by my own reaction to a book in a long time.
  
  The first two hundred or so pages of this book made me so angry and sad that my skin actually hurt; I felt bruised and empty every time I picked up the thing to read it. Poor Lo. Every page is chock-full of confirmation of the self-serving, others-oblivious nature of most human love. HH's insanity/self-delusion/self-deception makes his obsession with li... (show more)

  Brilliantly and intricately crafted, profoundly moving, hideous; I haven't been so shocked by my own reaction to a book in a long time.
  
  The first two hundred or so pages of this book made me so angry and sad that my skin actually hurt; I felt bruised and empty every time I picked up the thing to read it. Poor Lo. Every page is chock-full of confirmation of the self-serving, others-oblivious nature of most human love. HH's insanity/self-delusion/self-deception makes his obsession with little Lolita even more terrifying; rare and short-lived are his moments of second-guessing and remorse. He desperately tries to convince himself that his coercing (rather than flat-out rape) of Lolita removes him from the guilt of abuse, that her (however hesitant) acquiescence absolves him of wrongdoing.
  
  Lo is forced to grow up in an atmosphere of lecherous manipulation, and by the time she is fourteen years old, coldly selling her body in exchange for gifts has become her only consistent ritual, habit, normality. HH himself is oblivious to everything except his own obsession. He calls it love, and yet the object of his love lays in bed weeping every night of their initial road-trip; he makes the object of his "love" give him a hand job while she's sitting in her classroom at school, in the presence of all her (thankfully ignorant) classmates, and while he's watching another girl; every single day, HH confirms to Lolita that she is nothing but an object, a body, and that human love is nothing more than a self-satisfying lust.
  
  He is the single most repulsive character that I've ever met, but he's not entirely to blame for the tragedy. Lo's mother commits suicide (at least this is implied) by throwing herself in front of a car, fully aware of the danger her daughter is in from a predatory older man; she gives in to her own pain at HH's rejection instead of being strong enough, loving her daughter enough, to swallow that pain and protect her. She threatens HH, telling him that he'll never see Lo again, but the threat is only aimed at hurting him and has nothing whatsoever to do with removing her daughter from a dangerous situation; her own drama and her broken heart are more important to her than Lo's safety, and by killing herself she voluntarily places a little girl in a completely vulnerable position.
  
  And yes, Lolita does initially flirt with HH--she is a little girl, little girls are natural flirts; she had also already begun to experiment sexually before she even met him. But the height of HH's disgusting selfishness is the fact that he, with all his grown-up experience, responds to her actions as if she is as experienced as he is, never even considering (or else knowing and not caring) the psychological trauma and the developmental nightmares he is inflicting upon the unprotected child.
  
  As I read, my heart ached for little Lo, and every page jerked and twisted my insides; I almost vomited twice, and it took a lot of willpower to keep reading.
  
  The last fifty pages of the book left me nearly in tears; I actually pitied HH: his insanity and most of all his humanity; I became aware of exactly how much of his sense of right he had repressed in order to continue his relationship with Lo; chapter 32 was the turning point, when he allowed himself to dwell on the full extent of the damage he had inflicted on her. The best passage of the book is this, "I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face... that look I cannot exactly describe... and expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustration--and every limit presupposes something beyond it--hence the neutral illumination."
  
  And this, "But the awful point of the whole argument is this. It had become gradually clear to my conventional Lolita during our singular and bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest, which, in the long run, was the best I could offer the waif."
  
  He remembers the times when fleeting thoughts of abandoning his abusive behavior towards Lo were overcome, within seconds, by lust, and his momentary feelings of remorse vanished as he performed once again the actions that caused those feelings in the first place; and he is disgusted by himself. "I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais!"
  
  He murders the man that "stole" Lolita from him, charges him with sodomizing her; it's almost like watching him kill himself, symbolically destroying another man for the same sins he hates himself for committing. And then he immortalizes the object of his love in literature, as so many other poets have done.
  
  Lolita is beautifully written and is a powerful reminder of the human capacity for ego-centricity and self-deception, of the destructive and maddening nature of a selfish romantic love. The tragedy of the story lies in the fact that he was not just a lecherous old man: he actually and deeply loved Lolita. Even when she no longer looks anything like the little "nymphet" that originally sparked his lust, he still loves her and desperately wants to live the rest of his life with her; the flawed nature of his love for her, unfortunately, had already killed the possibility of her ever seeing him as anything but a pervert. Selfishness kills love, and people are filled to the brim with both. HH's brand of love is a mockery--it devours and destroys its objects--it is a black hole that can never be satisfied--it is self-pitying and never looks outside of itself--it is pathetic, a pitiful sham, and it is all that many people will ever experience.

  "He broke my heart. You merely broke my life." (show less)

   

  by Rosalind Goforth Ellis on Mar 20, 2009 at 01:58AM

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