A book worth the exploration, but given such lofty reputation, it is likely to leave one disappointed, even if only slightly.
Lolita. It’s been on my to read pile for a while now. It is a novel that, with reputation and all, stands as one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century. Not that I appeal to authority, but given the book’s literary presence, in no way do I think Lolita qualifies as one of the 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century. It’s a good book certainly, but much of its reputation, I have to believe, is due to the controversial subject matter for its day, as well as critics cribbing from one another their overpraise for the book.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - JSchneider
"finnegans wake, a disaster? how would you know? read it?"
Yup. Though I wouldn't exactly call that "readable text". And if Joyce hadn't written it, where would it be then?
27 - zingzing
it would probably be on a bookshelf with another author's name on it. it's a remarkable work, if, as you say, not exactly readable in any sort of common way.
it's a nearly unfathomable work, but that's kind of the point, isn't it? i'm not going to say that i've read every bit of it, and i tend to doubt those who say they have--but someone must have, i guess. still, it is beautiful in small doses.
with a lifetime of study, it might even be understandable. of course, once one breaks down one meaning, another possible interpretation arises, and you're back to square one (or you're on square two, but there's another square at the end).
that's not what i call "a disaster." it's writing as music, and language as art.
28 - JSchneider
"it's writing as music, and language as art."
If this is what you're looking for, I'd suggest Wallace Stevens or any great poet. Hell, even Dubliners.
Though it would be quite funny if Oprah picked FW for her book club. Imagine trying to balance that with Suze Orman.
29 - zingzing
while i agree that stevens certainly fits that description (as does dubliners, at times), i'd still have to say that finnegans wake does it in a different way, and with more obvious intent.
it's not even supposed to be READ in a traditional manner-- he doesn't ask you to begin on the first page, as it all circles around anyway. you can pick up it anywhere in its course, but it won't matter, because it's like trying to hold water.
30 - El Bicho
so characters are not allowed to speak in cliches?
You are certainly entitled to think the book isn't great, but that might say more about you then the book, which would explain your overly defensive and nasty attitude in the comments.
31 - JSchneider
"so characters are not allowed to speak in cliches?"
Why in the world would you want characters who speak in cliches? Yet for someone supposedly as learned as Humbert, I don't recommend it.
"which would explain your overly defensive and nasty attitude in the comments."
Wiggle your finger around in a tiger's cage and watch what happens.
32 - Rodney Welch
zingzing -- "Writing as music" definitely applies to Joyce, whose writing has an enormous melodic sense to it, where words become notes and sentences become chords. You can definitely see that in the last page of "The Dead" and in the last section of "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."
The last time I read the novel I noticed something, that the book's famous penultimate sentence had been introduced, piecemeal, in the pages leading up to it. You start seeing certain select words and the ideas they represent gradually over several pages: forging, soul, recreate, consciousness, race, O life, before he pulls them altogether in a kind of grand symphonic chorus on the last page: O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
33 - zingzing
oi. don't get me started on joyce. he was my favorite writer when i was in college (still is one of my favorites, of course), but i could never write about him as well as i wanted to. he's overwhelming at times.
that sentence you posted was enough to give me chills. i really need to read portrait again. i've got dubliners sitting in my living room right now, and plan on re-reading it... well, it was soon, but now it's next. it's such a shame he didn't put out more.
34 - Rodney Welch
But who can exhaust -- I mean really exhaust -- the four major works he left behind, especially the last one, which defeats me every time I pick it up?
35 - Jake
Finnegan’s Wake also defeated me. I put it down after about 40 or 60 pages.
36 - Phillip
Let’s say that someone " someone who cares a lot about books, and therefore has strong opinions (they usually go together) " thinks a book is great. If they read criticism of this book, they take it personally (they shouldn’t, but they do). It’s as if their judgement, their perceptions, their intelligence are being criticized. This raises their hackles, and off we go.
Long, long ago, when I first opened the pages of Lolita, in a Grove mass market paperback, I began reading with a fairly clean slate. Its reputation, at that time, was primarily of being a dirty book, but I very soon knew it wasn’t.
Jessica, on the other hand, began reading it when it was heavy with extravagant praise. This elevated status can effect one’s mind set in different ways. Two extremes: one person can slavishly see greatness in every word; another will start out with a hyper-critical attitude. I think Jessica leaned toward the latter " had a “Show me” attitude. There’s nothing wrong with that, if you truly do allow the author to show you. Mr. Nabokov didn’t show Jessica greatness. And I believe she could have been won over (she is won over, to a degree). She’s not the only person who didn’t care all that much for Lolita; another was the preeminent critic of his time, Edmund Wilson.
But, back to my first pristine reading. The nine grandiose words that begin Humbert’s narrative didn’t slow me down a bit. Now I’ve looked at them more closely. Are they cliches? I guess they are, but I don’t have a problem with cliches, not if they’re used for a purpose. Humbert is throwing it all at you, and that includes words commonly used to describe an outsized emotion. The context matters. Jessica says that what follows is “quite eloquent.” She even gives us an excerpt from that opening, ending with “But in my arms she was always Lolita.” But even that sentence doesn’t stand out; you need to start at the beginning of the paragraph for those words to take on weight: “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.” (Etc. " read it all; it’s a wonderful paragraph, as are all the excerpts Jessica uses.)
As a young man, finishing Lolita, I thought I had read a truly great novel. When I reread it, maybe twenty years later, it was still alive, exhilarating; it was still fascinating to occupy the complex, warped interstices of Humbert Humbert’s mind. It had lost nothing. After Lolita I read eight books by Nabokov (two others I started but didn’t like). I think I know the man.
He’s not a writer one can love; he doesn’t try for the reader’s love; in fact, I think he sets out to do the opposite " to alienate, to repulse. There is not a likeable character in Lolita. Why does Nabokov take this oppositional approach? I think it has to do with his very dark view of human nature, of life. The characters and their situations in his novels are often unpleasant, sometimes nightmarish.
He’s a cruel writer (Charlotte’s death, the murder of Quilty; even the name Humbert Humbert is degrading); the book is often very funny, but it’s a cruel humor.
I believe Humbert Humbert is a study in self-loathing (he and Lolita make their way across the country leaving a “sinuous trail of slime”). The book is about sexual obsession. It is not about love, as some have claimed. Humbert is not capable of love. His redeeming quality is, actually, his self-loathing, for he is aware of the wrong he does (“her sobs in the night " every night, every night " the moment I feigned sleep.”). In the introduction to another novel, Nabokov (the god-like creator) writes that “there is a green lane in paradise where Humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a year.” But the rest of his time must be spent in hell.
So " how can one love the unlovable, the repellent? Some can’t; they remain outside the character. But when Nabokov writes, “Look at this tangle of thorns,” I not only looked, but I went into the tangle.
37 - duane
That's a hell of a comment, Phillip. Very nicely done.
And, of course, you're quite right about people taking these things personally. It's a more intellectual version of having your musical tastes impugned.
My suspicion is that Nabokov is far too clever and complicated to be fully revealed by any one critic. He is mischievous and manipulative. I have read one professional critic claiming that Lo represents 'new' America and that Humbert represents 'old' Europe, and the whole thing is a drawn out allegory about his own evolving relationship with the 'New World.' Well, sure, why not? Nabokov would be, no doubt, amused.
38 - Rodney Welch
Good response, but I disagree on several points.
First, as I pointed out and Jessica was helpless to prove otherwise, "fire of my loins" seems to be a phrase that originated with Nabokov, so it's hard to make the case it's a cliche. Can someone prove it was used by 1958, let alone overused? Otherwise her argument lamely rests on four words -- "light of my life" -- the supposed triteness of which, as I also noted, was effectively diffused by its surroundings.
Second, you are dead wrong that Nabokov cannot be loved -- I love his novels and so do a LOT of others I read or talk with on a regular basis. They would all own up to being Nabokophiles. No doubt he created some disturbing characters, but his view of life and art is anything but dark. It's rich and generous and inspiring.
Third -- how can you say there are no likable characters in the book when the title character is so immensely likeable? She certainly has appeal, evokes sympathy and interest.
Fourth -- It's a love story. The man who sees Lolita at the end, when she is no longer a nymphet, when she's pregnant and married and has no use for him or his money, that man does feel love for the person whose youth he destroyed. Humbert is not a character who redeems himself, but he is clearly not not incapable of shame or of love.
39 - JSchneider
"First, as I pointed out and Jessica was helpless to prove otherwise, "fire of my loins" seems to be a phrase that originated with Nabokov, so it's hard to make the case it's a cliche. Can someone prove it was used by 1958, let alone overused? Otherwise her argument lamely rests on four words -- "light of my life" -- the supposed triteness of which, as I also noted, was effectively diffused by its surroundings."
Rodney, in all your arguments you didn't point out one unique idea of your own, only reinforce the obvious boner you have for this book. The use of "fire" to evoke passion or lust has been used for thousands of years. This should be obvious to someone claiming to be as "well read" as you do. (Perhaps you should read more and read better).
Had he said "Fire of my heart" it still would have sucked. The line opens the book, this is supposed to be A SERIOUS MOMENT and what does the character do? He farts. The only way that phrase could be excused based upon its surroundings is if the character acknowledged that he was being trite, or chuckled to himself and started again, or was admitting to being tongue and cheek. But the character is not any of those things. "Fire of my loins" is a very bad and obvious cliche and Nabokov did not "invent" it. He has shown in later passages that he is capable of much better writing than that. The fact that you think he "invented" such nonsense shows you don't know good writing from bad. What a surprise.
"I love his novels"
This is basically the core of your arguments thus far.
"how can you say there are no likable characters in the book when the title character is so immensely likeable? She certainly has appeal, evokes sympathy and interest."
Phillip is 100% correct about this. Again, I cannot help the fact that you have a boner for Lolita. But she's an annoying brat, Humbert is an annoying stiff, and Charlotte is just annoying period.
Lolita is not a love story. It is no more of a love story than Romeo and Juliet--2 immature, impetuous teenagers. You really think that's love? Humbert lives in his childish fantasies, he is selfish, Lolita is immature, demanding, manipulative, selfish and bratty. Again, not a good recipe for love.
No one can argue with your "likes" but your defenses esp. about the opening line is absolutely wrong and shows you are clearly "helpless to prove otherwise" that you really understand anything regarding the creative process.
40 - Rodney Welch
Jessica,
As you no doubt can't tell, my response was intended for a far less crude mind than yours. However, I'll indulge you.
"`Fire of my loins' is a very bad and obvious cliche and Nabokov did not `invent' it."
You keep saying this but you don't prove it. If it's so obvious, it shouldn't be difficult for you to prove a) that he didn't invent it or b) that it was a cliche by the time he did use it.
"The use of "fire" to evoke passion or lust has been used for thousands of years."
No doubt, but merely referring to fire to connote lust does not necessarily make it a cliche; it's the way you use it, and here he uses it in a particularly pointed, ornate, even comic sort of way, as becomes a comic novel.
Alas, you cannot tell this is a comic novel; you think it is a high-caps serious one, and it's easy to see why: Nabokov failed to resort to Picayune Rules for Writing Fiction So Plain Even Jessica Schneider Can Understand It, which apparently comes with an enclosed bullhorn, through which the author can announce intent so as not to escape a girl with the attention span of a gnat.
According to Jessica's edict, characters must acknowledge triteness, chuckle to himself and start again, or admit to being tongue and cheek.
"But the character is not any of those things," Jessica writes with characteristic petulance.
Ah, the upstart behavior of fictional characters -- always painful for self-professed experts on love and the creative process.
41 - JSchneider
Wow, so I guess you're back now for good?
Rodney, I do not need to prove a cliche to you. If you are not well read enough to know that "light of my life" or "bleeding heart" or "walk into the light" or "fire of my loins/heart/crotch" is a cliche then you don't understand poetry or writing at all. You've missed the boat and will never get it. That's why you resort to pontificating on blogs b/c you have no ideas or insights of your own. Maybe in your little universe you can babble about Stevens or Ozu and people will be impressed, but not me. I see through your poseur tendencies.
Yes one can return to classical ideas if they are phrased well in a fresh and new way. Nabokov does not do this. For a return to the classical, see Edna St. Vincent Millay. Yet what makes her poems good and Maya Angelou doggerel? Though "Fire of my loins" is not phrased well. Period. Get over it. Your 'genius' is flawed.
"it's the way you use it, and here he uses it in a particularly pointed, ornate, even comic sort of way, as becomes a comic novel."
There is nothing funny about that opening line. Not one iota of humor, Rodney. It is the introduction to the character, a serious moment, meant to be taken seriously. He is marveling over her. He is reminiscing. You can think all you want that Shakespeare's comedies are funny. They're not. Oscar Wilde is funny. Shakespeare is not. Nabokov is not.
"Picayune Rules for Writing Fiction So Plain Even Jessica Schneider Can Understand It, which apparently comes with an enclosed bullhorn, through which the author can announce intent so as not to escape a girl with the attention span of a gnat."
But what about pontificating old men poseurs with no creative ability? Ah yes, I see why Nabokov has a fan in you. Buzz buzz Rodney boy.
"According to Jessica's edict, characters must acknowledge triteness, chuckle to himself and start again, or admit to being tongue and cheek."
These were just some examples, but nice straw man.
"always painful for self-professed experts on love and the creative process."
Clearly your idea of love relationships have been more successful than any attempt at creative writing would ever be.
*Shiver*
42 - Rodney Welch
So you admit defeat?
43 - JSchneider
No. I win. You admit your boner?
44 - Rodney Welch
No evidence, no cliche, no win.
45 - JSchneider
Evidence, cliche, win. But nice try.
46 - Rodney Welch
Where?
47 - JSchneider
In your loins.
48 - Rodney Welch
Where is your evidence that "fire of my loins" is a cliche? You keep saying it's one merely because you say it is, and not because you can prove it is. Then when I ask you to prove it, you say you don't have to, which suggests to me that you simply can't. Right? I mean, you can't, can you?
49 - Mike
Jessica,
It seems to me, regarding the whole cliche argument going on, that you have simply chosen the wrong word and are now forced to defend an argument which, as Rodney points out, you have not been able to. Perhaps it would be more precise of you to say that the opening line is kitsch?
"It is the introduction to the character, a serious moment, meant to be taken seriously."
Why? Who says it has to be a serious moment? I think this type of thinking is what has led you astray with Nabokov to begin with. He was not an author who played by the rules; in fact he clearly enjoyed bending and breaking the rules just to prove how useless they are. If you glean anything from these criticisms of your criticism it should be that, as a reader, it would do you well to read without such preconceived notions.
50 - Brunelleschi
I just watched the Kubric movie, it was awesome.
The woman who played Lolita in the film had a sad time afterward. :(
51 - JSchneider
Mike,
Here is the online definition of kitsch:
1 : something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality
2 : a tacky or lowbrow quality or condition
Cliches fall into this category. They appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator, are overused and are therefore cliches. Any book, Hollywood movie, phrase that one thinks of as kitsch is so because it is cliched. The words are not mutually opposing.
Why? Who says it has to be a serious moment?
If you rape women or torture animals, maybe Ted Bundy would find this funny but most sane people would not. The scene is not funny, it's not meant to be funny, it's not "black humor" either. There is no humor. He is trying to be poetic.
I have no preconceived notions. Hence why I was able to find flaws--I took the work for what it was, and I do not parrot what other critics have said before me, nor rely on author intent.
Any great writer has broken rules, that is not something unique to Nabokov. What matters is if he breaks them well.
52 - JSchneider
I'd also like to add that kitsch can be a good, fun romp--be it a Godzilla movie, a vaudeville act, or bad American Idol auditions. Something can also be so bad it is good, like Plan 9--the difference lies in the level of seriousness or rather, pretension. Lest you end up with a "fire in your loins."
53 - Rodney Welch
Which remains an original phrase.
54 - JSchneider
Rodney, why do you insist on humiliating yourself? Here is a quick Google search of the phrases "fire, loins" and "poetry". Look how often loins is paired with fire and heat. The last line is taken from a Dylan Thomas poem and he's the only one who even remotely tries to alter the cliche in some way.
And this doesn't even cover all the crap on poetry dot com, all the bad prose, and the myriad of crap that is not online. Do you really think these little teenagers have been influenced by Nabokov?
Again, I have proven you are wrong. Just admit you like the opening. Simply, you just like it. You have no intellectual defense. I can't argue with your likes. But that opening line is not only a bad line, it is a HORRIBLE one. Your 'genius' fucked up. Anyone with a brain knows this is a cliche that has been used thousands upon thousands of times and that it was nothing new to Nabokov.
You have shown to not only be a poor reader, you also show you don't understand a funny scene from a serious one, a cliche from a well crafted phrase, lust from love and your ignorance is just stunning. Hence why you get 2 readers to your blog a month. But don't think I don't know you're reading my sites obsessively.
I WIN.
fire in the words I’m
writing I hope
fire in my belly,
fire in my loins,
The fire that burns in your loins is the blood of life.
But Warriors yearn it with vigor intact
With fire in our loins
Till that last stroke
Molten lava in his loins steady on his big black feet
Her loins were now a blazing fire
With massive appetites and burning loins
You have sparked my fire
It is roaring hot
My loins are burning
I will forget you not.
I will engulf her with the fire of my loins
In their loins sow madness and fever
That my fame may endure forever.
Fire runs through her loins,
Only his touch can soothe.
bleeding
more warmly than any issue of their loins
unaware of where we're headed, or the fire
burning in his loins.
“Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait”
When his long-legged flesh was a wind on fire
And his loin was a hunting flame
Coil
55 - Rodney Welch
Interesting, though, that Mike brings up the issue of kitsch. Personally, as stated, I find the opening lines, like all the descriptions of Lolita in the novel, to be appealingly lush.
You can definitely find deliberate elements of kitsch, though, in the novel; Nabokov famously said there is nothing as "exhilarating as philistine vulgarity," and the book freely spoofs low-brow taste, whether in regard to Lo's mother or in the many seedy motels on Lo and Hum's crosscountry journey.
Trash, high and low, had a certain appeal to Nabokov; of particular interest was anything that smacked of poshlost, an untranslatable Russian word which applies to trash that masquerades as high art. Comic books, for example, aren't poshlost because they don't pretend to be art, while the sentimental paintings of Norman Rockwell or a novel like Virginia Woolf's Orlando, both of which he hated, are another.
For me, a good recent example of poshlost is either American Beauty or Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
One wonders what Nabokov would have made of graphic novels.
56 - Rodney Welch
Remember, Jessica, I said a) prove that he didn't invent it or b) that it was a cliche by the time he did use it, that is, 1958.
57 - JSchneider
Dylan Thomas died in '53 and is playing off the cliche. At least he tries to invert it. Nabokov does not. Good phrases hold up over time, the best of Shakespeare, Whitman are fresh can be read as though they were written yesterday. Yet stale phrases as that one do not transcend. If you didn't know that opening line to the book you could insert it within all those doggerel lines and would not be able to tell who wrote what.
"Personally, as stated, I find the opening lines, like all the descriptions of Lolita in the novel, to be appealingly lush."
You can like the book. I'm not disagreeing with you. But it is clear that you've not gone to enough writing groups where bad writers have written the same old crap again and again.
58 - Rodney Welch
I'm not convinced, Jessica, although that is interesting about Dylan Thomas.
I think it may be that what you are responding to is the possibility that the phrase has been borrowed many times since then, which wouldn't surprise me, since "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins" is one the most memorable opening lines of any novel in 20th Century American literature; it's swift and poetic -- there's a kind of assonance in that i sound that makes it stick in the memory -- and structurally it's perfect. It ignites the novel.
59 - JSchneider
I don't have to convince you. I can claim that trolls live under bridges, but reality is what it is and it goes on regardless if you choose to accept it or not.
The idea of "firey loins" is goes back to the Greeks, to any classic love poetry and to the Bible. It is in no way fresh, new, inventive or original. It's a generic and poorly written line and likely the worst I've ever seen open a classic literary novel.
Then I beheld, and, lo, a form that had the appearance of a man; below what appeared to be his loins it was fire, and above his loins it was like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming bronze.
Ezekiel 8:2 >>
Your loins will shine like a golden fire Luke 12:31-48
60 - Rodney Welch
So you're saying it's a classical allusion? That wouldn't surprise me; the book is full of them.
61 - JSchneider
So you're saying it's a classical allusion?
Allude: : to make indirect reference.
There is nothing indirect about "fire and loins" when one states "fire and loins."
62 - Rodney Welch
Actually, no one literally says "fire and loins.". But I'm not sure Nabokov was, in this case, drawing from the Bible, of if he was drawing on anyone at all, just that it wouldn't surprise me if he was.
63 - No Oprah Zone
Face it, Rodney, Nabokov did not originate the phrase "Fire of my loins," it's a plain fact that the phrase he wrote was a stale, worn out cliche long before 1959. (Dylan Thomas died in 1953, so he couldn't have borrowed it from Nabokov: also, Thomas' reputation doesn't derive from that poem, he's allowed to write bad poems like anyone else, Wordsworth wrote reams of terrible poetry, as well as reams of excellent poetry, but the terrible, cliche-filled stuff is not what his reputation is based on. Whereas Nabokov's rep DOES depend primarily on LOLITA. That's the difference.)
I think Nabokov is wildly overrated: his writing is mannered and self-conscious. Nabokov was a sometimes interesting but overrated, ornate stylist. Somebody once did a parody of Nabokov's style online that was almost indistinguishable from the real thing. (Several Nabokov fans were fooled.) Truly great writers can use the simplest, plainest language in marvelous ways: "To be or not to be... I stop somewhere waiting for you... She's a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair..." Nabokov never does that. He's always showing off, strutting around like Liberace in a fur coat, with diamond rings on every finger, never ever using the plain, ordinary word when an obscure, latinate synonym will do. This is why he can only create one type of character convincingly: pompous, arrogant narcissists like Humbert Humbert (whose personality is indistinguishable from Hermann Hermann, or the protagonist of LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, whatever his name was, or countless other Nabokov protagonists. He changes the name but it's the same guy each time.)
Nabokov only has one "character type" - long-winded, snobbish, self-enamored bores. Probably because he himself was one. Every other type of human being in his novels or stories is a cardboard cutout, and that includes Lolita.
Finally, I find it odd that Jessica is being attacked for dissenting from the fashion of the moment, when Nabokov himself was notorious for trashing countless "great" writers he himself considered not to be truly great. From Dostoyevsky to Saul Bellow to Henry James to Thomas Mann (the writer he most resembles and derived the most from, but who was far more talented), Nabokov breezily dismissed them all as boring second-raters. Why shouldn't he receive a taste of his own freely administered medicine?
64 - Rodney Welch
I wondered how long it would be before Jessica picked up a supporter [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor].
Anyway, No Oprah Zone, I contend that the only case that has been made is that it might possibly be a classical allusion, but it simply strains credulity to say the phrase is trite because fire and loins once appeared somewhere else. I'm not sure much else can be said.
What's not original are your criticisms. Nice try with the Mann thing, though.
65 - Rodney Welch
Make that two supporters, as the "Comments Editor" somehow thinks my suspicions of Jessica throwing her shrill voice through another amounts to a personal attack. Petty, petty...
66 - Christopher Rose
Rodney, as well as your unfounded suspicion, you also threw a variety of insults her way that crossed the line into personal attack as opposed to debating the issue, so your remarks merited editing.
As to supporting either one of you, you must be joking, the book ain't worth it.
67 - JSchneider
No Oprah Zone:
I did a Google search online and these are just some of the phrases using fire and loins (or a play off that) from OLD writers. Rodney seems to think that literature begins and ends with Nabokov. And this is only skimming online--there are thousands from old poets that are not necessarily going to be found on Google. So other than Dylan Thomas...
John Keats:
many once proud-quiver'd loins did melt
In blood from stinging whip;-
Whitman:
My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them
John Gower (1330-1408)
“Money did not touch their pockets, nor wine their palates, and no carnal flame burned in their loins.”
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Isis Unveiled: (1877)
“When he sits on the throne he blazes with fire up to the loins.”
Charles Baudelaire:
And loins once supple in their tempered fire,
William Blake:
free are the wrists of fire;
Round the terrific loins
Horace:
When your loins swell with fire,
And here is Rodney's argument:
"Which remains an original phrase."
Laughable.
68 - Rodney Welch
Jessica, You have at long last managed to back up a case you have not made before, and I have to concede you have a point -- as those quotations do indicate that the quote did not, as I said, originate with Nabokov. It may even be that, given the wealth of classical quotes you gather here, that the word cliche is not completely unfair, at least from your viewpoint. As a previous commentator noted, you viewed the book with very much of a chip on your shoulder, and for all your well-noted blindness throughout the book, I have to concede that your eyes were not wide shut on the first line of the narrative proper.
To me, however, as I've said before, the word choice is not only melodic, but seems to suggest Nabokov was making a reflective pattern -- light, fire, sin, soul, that suggests the struggle between flesh and conscience that will dominate Humbert's narrative -- and absorbing a classical allusion in the process.
69 - JSchneider
OK, fair enough. Let us leave it at that. Though I didn't read the book with any chip on my shoulder--my review was positive and I noted many of its merits.
I am already onto reading another book for review and must admit I am Lolita'd out.
70 - No Oprah Zone
"What's not original are your criticisms. Nice try with the Mann thing, though."
They don't have to be original. They simply have to be true. George Steiner, John Simon, John Leonard, and many other critics have made the case against Nabokov well, but their arguments have been dismissed by his fawning fans, who overlook his numerous flaws and limitations in their bid to make this talented but ultimately minor novelist into some sort of Shakespearian genius. His prolix, mannered prose style is there to disguise the triteness of his perceptions. And it is HIS style, not Humbert Humbert's, because he writes the exact same way even in other novels, even when he's writing in the third person instead of the first person. So it can't simply be claimed that he is satirizing Humbert Humbert's pretensions by writing this way, since he ALWAYS writes this way.
And yes, he was a second-rank epigone of Thomas Mann (although with several plots stolen from Dostoyevsky). That's why he singled out Mann's DEATH IN VENICE for especial scorn, out of Mann's vast oeuvre, because he was envious of the German's achievement in far more hauntingly and beautifully portraying the madness and desolation of a middle-aged man's sexual obsession with a child. Nabokov simply heterosexualized a situation Mann had dramatized with greater power and urgency.
71 - Rodney Welch
Well, in a sense, I think, you may be right, that it is his style, not Humbert Humbert's -- but not because his characters are all the same, because they aren't; I see little of Humbert in the mild-mannered Timofey Pnin or Cincinnatus or Krug or Paduk. No question, a number of his characters are certainly deluded, but the delusions themselves are different, usually to an elaborate degree. Humbert is suave, vampiric and sophisticated; I don't think he'd be caught dead in the company of an obnoxious boor like Charles Kinbote, although I suspect he'd understand him.
Humbert's style is, however, an echo of Nabokov's, but that's part of what makes Lolita such a rewarding read when for so many re-readers, because beyond the fact that it's about a man who wants to possess a young girl, it is also about a man possessed by an artist, who is directing his path, forcing him into a variety of troubles. We get a hint of this early on, in the false forward by John Ray, Ph.D., in which we learn not only that "Humbert Humbert" is simply an assumed name, but that a number of the characters and places in the manuscript before us -- "Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male" -- have presumably been changed to protect identities, so already we've been served warning that Humbert's account isn't exactly true; elsewhere we learn that this brilliantly composed and highly structured book is but a first draft thrown together over the course of 50-some days in hopes of helping Humbert with his court case, and as you read the book there's a sense both that Humbert either isn't playing entirely straight with us or that he's the author's puppet. This idea, of this dim awareness that you are a character in someone's story, is one Nabokov frequently returned to.
Does Nabokov write the exact same way, novel for novel? Well, at some level, I suppose most writers do, more or less, once they find a style that works for them. All of Dickens books sound the same; so do all of Austen's and Ishiguro's and Roth's. I don't consider that a defect, unless it's boring and repetitious.
So far as I can tell, the last paragraph is just vengeful thinking on your part, so we can skip that unless you have some actual proof. But do feel free to tell me about these trite perceptions. I'd like to hear them.
72 - No Oprah Zone
But Rodney, when you bring up "John Ray Jr.," that confirms my point. The voice of John Ray Jr. is the same (or very similar) supercilious voice as the rest of the novel. Yes, I know it's not "the same" character, because Nabokov tells me it isn't, but I hear the same archly avuncular tone throughout....
'For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of the "real" people beyond the "true" story, a few details may be given .... so that "the long shadow of this sorry and sordid business": should not reach..." Click. My eyes glaze over. The same flourishy locuations, the same alliterative wordplay ("bizarre cognomen," "two hypnotic eyes," "wearer's wish," "interwound with the inmost," "sorry and sordid," "etiolated by platitudinous evasions," etc. etc.) as the rest of the novel, or LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, or in various short stories, or various essays, or his memoir. It's basically the same voice each time.
Or how about this exchange, from LAUGHTER:
"Tell me, have you read Tolstoy?"
"Doll's Toy?" queried Dorianna Karenina [an actress]. "No, I'm afraid not, why?"
I mean, come on. This is not effective satire.
DOLL'S TOY?! NO, WHO'S DOLL'S TOY? The stereotype that actors are all idiotic philistines with no brain and no knowledge is just that: a superficial stereotype. Around the time Nabokov wrote this novel, Greta Garbo starred in a movie version of ANNA KARENINA. Christ, Oprah Winfrey put ANNA KARENINA on her book club list, because it was one of those books she'd always wanted to read and never had. This sort of satire is a fourteen-year-old's notion of cleverness - but the joke is on Nabokov, who merely revealed, yet again, how little he actually knows about ordinary people. It reminds me of Shelley Winters calling Van Gogh "Van GAWG" in the movie version of LOLITA. It's a snob's idea of what the uncultured masses are like. But it is Nabokov himself who stands revealed as the philistine. Contrast his dumb satire with Dreiser's treatment of the illusions of would-be stars in SISTER CARRIE. He really gets at the tawdry pathos of Carrie's shallow yearnings. (Whoever derided Dreiser upthread merely revealed his own cluelessness in matters of artistry, for Dreiser really is profound on the illusions of the bourgeois, unlike the supercilious Nabokov.)
Now he has the right to his voice, but I also have the right not to like it. And I also continue to maintain that he is wildly overrated, because whereas most Hemingway fans, for instance, acknowledge the constancy of his voice, the Hemingway style, and acknowledge that Papa has his limits as an artist, Nabokov fans in my experience do not. They pretend to an enormous variation of style that isn't there. I don't have the same objection to the praise of Hemingway because I've never seen Hemingway praised for a Shakespearian or Jamesian plenitude. His admirers generally acknowledge his limits, Nabokov's do not. (Also, you are wrong that other writers don't evolve. That's why people speak of early or late Shakespeare, or early, middle, and late period Henry James - because they do employ a wide variety of styles, they have variety, Nabokov does not.)
I believe it was Kingsley Amis who said Nabokov could never write a sentence without SEEING himself write. That seems to me the truth. He never just writes a sentence, he seems to be congratulating himself on his stylist flourishes in the very moment of inditing the sentence.
I also found this, right now, looking up Kingsley Amis on Nabokov:
"No extract, however, could do justice to the sustained din of pun, allusion, neologism, alliteration, cynghanedd, apostrophe, parenthesis, rhetorical question, French, Latin, 'anent', 'perchance', 'would fain', 'for the nonce,' - here is style and no mistake. One will be told, of course, that this is the 'whole point', that this is the hero, Humbert Humbert, talking in his own person, not the author, and that what we are getting is 'characterization'. All right; but it seems ill-advised to characterize logomania by making it talk 120,000 words at us, and a glance at Nabokov's last novel, Pnin, which is not written in the first person, establishes that this is Nabokov talking. . . . The development of this emigre's euphemism is a likely consequence of Nabokov's having had to abandon his natural idiom, as he puts it, his 'untrammelled, rich and infinitely docile Russian tongue'. This, which enacts the problem with characteristic tricksy indirection, also implies its solution as the laborious confection of equivalent apparatuses in the adoptive language: the whole farrago of imagery, archaism, etc, which cannot strike even the most finely tuned foreign ear as it strikes that of the native English-speaker. The end product sadly invokes a Charles Atlas muscle-man of language as opposed to the healthy and useful adult."
That Charles Atlas reference, in my view, is exactly right.
Sometimes he comes up with memorable and compelling word combinations (the phrase "simian vegetation" from his memoir, I believe, has stuck in my head forever). But by and large, I find his constant wordplay, together with his snobbish sense of aristocratic superiority to 90 percent of the human race, tiresome and unrewarding.
73 - Rodney Welch
In short, you find his use of language showy. Fair enough. You see Charles Atlas, bodybuilder for his own sake. I see Muhammad Ali, heavyweight champion, leader of his field. You have the right not to like it, I have the right to gush.
I find Nabokov's prose generous, and not just generous but interesting in the best sense of the word, because I don't think he's using strange or obscure or odd words to show that he can, but because he's trying to paint the richest, liveliest, most intricate picture, not unlike Proust. For me, as a reader, he demands a lot, demands you open your eyes to see those small "divine details" that create a work of art, a work that not only demands close attention, but repays it.
Now, I used the word gush above, and it's correct, but when I read his books there's more going on than admiration. I feel he as a writer is giving me a lot on which to feed, the same way I feel with every great artist. The books make me appreciate his deep sense of life, and they make me want to know more, to dig deeper, not just into his works but in other books and other subjects, because he looked at everything that way, the way every writer should, with a deep sense of interest. He's a great writer and a great teacher.
As to whether he's a snob where ordinary people are concerned -- well, there are plenty of ordinary folks in his ouevre, and they come off pretty well compared to the people who think they know a lot more than they do. Do you recall the passage in Lolita regarding Avis Bird? She's a friend of Lolita's, and she and Humbert stop by for a visit. Avis is no Lolita -- "heavy, unattractive, affectionate," as that arch-snob Humbert puts it -- but she has something Lolita lacks and, thanks to Humbert, will always lack.
We read how "fat Avis sidled up to her papa," how she "clung to her father's neck and ear," how the father embraced her in return, and "enveloped his large and lumpy offspring." Seeing this, Lolita's smile loses "all its light and becomes a frozen little shadow of itself." She leaves the room crying, "to be followed at once and consoled in the kitchen by Avis who had such a wonderful fat pink dad and a small chubby brother, and a brand-new baby sister, and a home, and two grinning dogs, and Lolita had nothing."
Now for the interesting part, to get to the meat of your post: is it possible for Nabokov fans to spot his limitations as an artist? Well, as expressed above, I obviously don't find reading him as painful as you do. I read him with joy, and while it would no doubt be wonderfully fair-minded and tremendously objective to say yes, yes, Nabokov is thoroughly fallible, the fact of the matter is that I tend to give Nabokov the benefit of the doubt, that even when I think he's off his mark with certain novels -- Glory; Laughter in the Dark; King, Queen, Knave; Look at the Harlequins!; perhaps Ada -- I still enjoy those books, and find that they fail only when judged against his best work, and look pretty good compared to everything else.
John Updike, one of Nabokov's greatest fans, confessed that he didn't get Ada. I didn't either. But there are so many people who not only do get it but become obsessed with it that I find myself thinking, based on my own past experience, that it may just deserve another and much closer look.
Lest you think that I'm just an uncritical, raving fan -- as I frankly tend to be on subjects ranging from Nabokov to Bob Dylan to Luis Bunuel to Pavement -- let me say in conclusion that I do understand your dislike of this community of fans, high and low, of which I am no doubt a part. There's something extremely seductive about Nabokov's style -- that's why so many people, ranging from Martin Amis to Amy Tan to Jeffrey Eugenides to Salman Rushdie to Mary Gaitskill keep going back to him. I think more than any other book Lolita is the one novel they all wish they'd written.
The same goes for his mind, his life, his outlook -- so many people who fall under his spell want to be just like him and they mimic his every opinion, and they come across sounding, as I no doubt occasionally do, sounding as if they have no other frame of reference.
But, it's weird -- sometimes seeing something his way makes it hard to unsee it.
Personally, I don't agree with all of his literary opinions, but it's a healthy disagreement. I don't know if I would have read Dostoevsky as much as I have if Nabokov hadn't insistently told me not to, and I read Faulkner with a great deal more interest and enthusiasm than Nabokov ever did. I know almost nothing of Thomas Mann, but Nabokov will not keep me from reading him in the future.
Can I ever completely un-Nabokovize myself? You're certainly free to try!
74 - No Oprah Zone
Fair enough, but you didn't write any of this. The initial posts, yours included, were a string of insults flung the reviewer's way (bad enough that the editor of the website had to censor your comments).
I was simply pointing out that by dissenting from the fashion of hailing LOLITA as a masterpiece, she wasn't doing anything Nabokov himself didn't do all throughout his life, from his youth to his old age. I happen to think it's ridiculous to excoriate a reviewer for doing what the NOVELIST IN QUESTION liked to do INCESSANTLY: thumb his nose at conventional wisdom in matters literary.
Frankly, I found her argument against Nabokov far more convincing than Nabokov's argument against Dostoyevsky, for example. The lines she criticized as rephrasings of age-old cliches are exactly that. Yet for pointing this out, she was slammed. Even if you think he played wittily upon old stock phrases, they're still stock phrases, and she had the right, and the obligation, as a reviewer to point that out.
As I said, some of Nabokov's writing is good, but I don't agree with your interpretation of those lines about Avis Bird. I do not hear sympathy or affection in "fat Avis sidled up to papa". This seems to me a passage written by someone who knows he probably should feel something for Avis, but doesn't actually feel it, but he knows he ought to feign a certain common humanity. Of course, the POV is Humbert's, so you could still attribute that lack to the character as opposed to the author.
This is one of my biggest problems with the cult of Nabokov. I think Nabokov's readers are hearing resonances that aren't there, and missing some very unpleasant qualities that ARE there. They miss his haughtiness, his sourness, his superciliousness. Of course a writer can be a misanthrope and still be an important artist, but it seems to me admirers of Celine or William S. Burroughs, for instance, have a pretty acute sense of what it is they're praising, whereas Nabokov's make him out to have a richness and fullness of feeling that isn't truly there.
There used to be an essay by John Simon about Nabokov in the New Criterion's archives that unfortunately no longer seems to be available. But Simon in my view gets Nabokov exactly right. He's especially insightful, I think, on why Nabokov hated Freud so much (despite the fact that the explanation he provides for H.H.'s obsession with Lolita is very Freudian in tone).
It's a shame the essay seems to be no longer online (I checked: it's a 1991 review of NABOKOV: THE RUSSIAN YEARS by Brian Boyd - but the text is no longer freely available), because it's a brilliant analysis of Nabokov's work. John Simon's conclusion was: A genuine talent, yes. A literary titan? By no means. I agree with his assessment. I won't say anything more, because as far as I'm concerned, Simon says all that needs to be said against Nabokov perfectly.
75 - Rodney Welch
I do not wish to uncrumple the much-crumpled thing with Jessica.
You seem to be saying, however, that it's okay for Jessica to criticize Nabokov but wrong for me to criticize Jessica. It's also beginning to look as if you cannot tell the difference between good criticism from poor, only the difference between what you agree with and what you don't.
Good criticism reveals a work, whereas bad criticism simply reveals a reviewer and his or in this case her (or your) limitations.
People may not agree with Nabokov on Dostoevsky, but he does reveal aspects of Crime and Punishment that you won't find elsewhere.
People may not agree with John Simon on Brian Boyd's biography of Nabokov, but he states the case for the opposition intelligently and interestingly.
Intelligent readers of Lolita, on the other hand, may find the book sullied by Jessica's heavy hands, and comments such as "I found her argument against Nabokov far more convincing than Nabokov's argument against Dostoyevsky" will likely look at you with little more than embarrassment.
You write "This seems to me a passage written by someone who knows he probably should feel something for Avis, but doesn't actually feel it, but he knows he ought to feign a certain common humanity." You actually can't see a genuine, deeply sympathetic mini-portrait as presented by a character who feels very little sympathy?
That chip on your shoulder regarding Nabokov has swollen into a tumor. The news that you have nothing else to say is welcome indeed.