Lolita

Book excerpt

By: Vladimir Nabokov

Date: 1955

Source: Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Everyman's Library. New York: Knopf, 1992. Originally published in 1955.

About the Author: Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1899. He was the oldest of five siblings and was raised in a wealthy, aristocratic family. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1919, Nabokov and his family moved to England where he enrolled in Cambridge University to study French and Russian literature. After leaving England in 1922, Nabokov published his first Russian novel, Mary, in 1925; he continued to publish novels in Russian during the years before World War II, when he lived in Germany and France. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, his first English novel, was published in 1941. In the 1950s, while pursuing another of his passions—the study of butterflys, Nabokov wrote his most famous work, Lolita. He died in 1977 having published several other works during the last sixteen years of his life, including Pale Fire and Ada; or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. None of them matched the notoriety of Lolita.

INTRODUCTION

After being rejected by four American publishers, Lolita was finally published in 1955 by a French publisher, Olympia Press. The book's first printing of 5,000 copies sold out quickly after author and critic Graham Greene hailed the work in the London Times as one of the best books of the year. Lolita also received other, less laudatory reviews as well. John Gordon of the Sunday Express called it "sheer unrestrained pornography"; the British Home Office confiscated all copies that entered the country. In 1956, the French interior minister banned the novel as well; it remained forbidden for two years. In 1958, the book was finally published in the United States and sold 100,000 copies in three weeks, the first novel to do so since Gone with the Wind.

The novel tells the story of Humbert Humbert, who is writing a novel from his jail cell, where he's being held while on trial for murder. His manuscript recounts his love affair with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze, or Lolita, the daughter of his landlady, Charlotte Haze, who rented a room to Humbert after his wife left him on the eve of their emigration to the United States.

Humbert, still recovering from an earlier, unrequited infatuation with Annabel, another "nymphet," soon becomes obsessed with Lolita. When her mother sends Lolita away to summer camp, Humbert marries Charlotte. After Charlotte discovers Humbert's journal documenting his obsession with Lolita, she is struck by a car.

Humbert picks up Lolita from her summer camp and tells her that her mother is at a hospital. The two have their first sexual encounter and then set out on a driving tour of the United States. As they travel for the next year, they continue the affair. They settle in the town of Beardsley, but their stay is short-lived. Lolita is pursued by Clare Quilty, a well-known writer and producer of pornography, who eventually bribes Lolita to leave Humbert and work for him. After years apart, Humbert receives word from Lolita, who is now eighteen, that she needs his help. Humbert finds Quilty and kills him, feeling justified that he did society a favor by killing a person with such perversions.

PRIMARY SOURCE

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

SIGNIFICANCE

Nabokov's son Dmitri once noted that his father was more than "a person who wrote a very dirty book put out by a very dirty publisher." However, Lolita's legacy overshadowed most of Nabokov's later literary works. Advocates and academics assert that the novel itself was benign, but that its legacy overtook the novel itself. The book was first translated to film in a 1962 version directed by Stanley Kubrick with a screenplay written by Nabokov himself. The film ran into the same problems that the book at first encountered. Kubrick was forced to deal with film industry censor-ship as well as powerful film rating groups who deemed it obscene. A 1997 film version received additional objections about the content.

Nabokov supporters suggest that the image of Lolita has been transformed by mass media. The book itself is not taught to high school students, not taught to many undergraduates, and has not been a best seller since it was first introduced. However, the idea of Lolita emerges in advertising; allusions—such as Amy Fisher's nickname "The Long Island Lolita"; and in music like the Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me." Lolita branding covers anything from call girl services to underwear.

In August 1996, the First World Congress Against Commercial Exploitation of Children protested the release of the 1997 film version of Lolita and launched an attack on "Lolita imagery" in advertising. Regardless of academic acclaim of the book Lolita, much of society refuses to tolerate the depiction of pedophilia.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Periodicals

Marks, John. "Lolita, a Girl for the '90s." U.S. News and World Report (October 14, 1996).

Schiff, Stacy. "Forever Young." New York Times (September 15, 2005).

Web sites

CNN In-Depth Reports. "Beyond Lolita: Rediscovering Nabokov on His Birth Centennial" ?http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/books/1999/nabokov? (accessed March 20, 2006).