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
76 - No Oprah Zone
"Good criticism reveals a work, whereas bad criticism simply reveals a reviewer and his or in this case her (or your) limitations."
If that is so, all of the hostile comments her review received fall firmly into the "bad" camp, since none of them made any case for Nabokov's artistry, they simply reiterated the dogma that he was some master artist. I know YOU didn't write this, but look again at Andrew B.'s comment:
"The aesthetics of the prose suffices to make it a masterpiece."
That's it. That's the rebuttal. The prose is brilliant, period, so shut up. Never mind that her fucking review never CLAIMED the prose is ALL bad, only that SOME celebrated parts of it are - which they are!! Some "refutation" by Andrew B. If anyone produced "bad" criticism here, it's Andrew, not Jessica.
And then there's this tripe, from "Lisa":
"Oh, dear. Nabokov wrote the damned cliche. He made it. Lolita remains one of the most amazing books written. The prose, indeed, makes it a masterpiece."
Note the snide little air of condescension. "Oh dear.... oh dear..." I recognize that academic, ivory tower tone. "Nabokov WROTE the damned cliche. He MADE it." Um, oh dear, oh dear, no SORRY Lisa, sorry to burst your bubble, but he bloody well DIDNT. As Jessica proved beyond doubt, it was a cliche going back millennia. Both you and Lisa claimed Nabokov invented a phrase and mode of expression he CLEARLY did NOT invent. But I don't blame you, because I've heard that sort of claim made numerous times, that Nabokov invented this or that phrase, this or that famous expression, when in reality all he did was restate an age-old stock phrase. This is what I mean about his wildly inflated rep. People assume he invented phrases and modes of expression he was merely spoofing.
I didn't claim her review was flawless, only that she DID defend her arguments with specific textual evidence. She didn't just throw out opinions, she quoted exactly what aspects she was objecting to. And like I said, Simon's critique does go into more elaborate detail.
Fashions in the arts change, the reputations are written in water, and the day will come when Nabokov is looked on as the George Meredith of his day, an overpraised, glossy stylist with little engagement with or understanding of life. George Steiner, for one, has already made the case well. What does Nabokov reveal about life comparable to what Dostoevsky, Dreiser, Mann, Henry James have to say? Nothing. They are great artists, Nabokov isn't. Style alone isn't enough (as the posthumous fate of Meredith shows), particularly when the style itself is too often surface flash and parodic excess masking paucity of thought and pettiness of feeling.
"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."
Maybe you should take a closer look at the counter-arguments. Pevear and Volokhonsky, the Dostoevsky translators, argue (correctly) that Nabokov was envious of old Fyodor's superior artistry, and point out how many times he stole plots from him and simply reworked them (to much lesser effect). They also demonstrate convincingly that Dostoevsky was, in his own way, a major stylist who DID take great care with his language (however, since he often ON PURPOSE feigned the "crude" style of an amateur writer, unobservant readers often fail to note that the crudities, the prolixity, the repetitions are often introduced DELIBERATELY, CONSCIOUSLY, and to specific ARTISTIC effect. This is the sort of thing only a master can do, and is lightyears beyond the ability of a flamboyant wordspinner like Nabokov.)
Jessica successfully demonstrates tired old cliches employed by Nabokov, Nabokov makes claims against Dostoyevsky that don't stand up to scrutiny. Whether you like it or not, and can admit it or not, "I am a sick man, I am a wicked man.... I think my liver is diseased" sounds a new note in literature, and opens up new territory. "Light of my life, fire of my loins," is a two-millennium old stock phrase, and even if Nabokov knew it was a cliche, given how much unwarranted and rhapsodic praise has been heaped on that opening paragraph, she was right to point out how stale it is, even IF Nabokov DID intend it to be funny. Of course he has the right to write whatever he wants, but that's the first time I've seen anyone point out the obvious: the opener is a compendium of cliches that are NOT all that wittily transposed. Normally all one hears is what a genius Nabokov is for that supposedly extraordinary, but in actuality somewhat pedestrian, opener.
And make no mistake, many admirers of the book DO take that opener straight, and NOT as spoof of corny romance cliches. And yet, if you DONT take it as comedy, it's syrupy dreck. The cover of the paperbacks all reprint the same reviewer's blurb: "The only convincing love story of our century." What!? It's not a "love" story at all in any normal sense of the word "love." Lolita is scarcely even a plausible depiction of a human being.
It also reveals where Nabokov's real talent lay: in parody, spoof, lampoon. Insofar as Nabokov demonstrates skill in that famously celebrated paragraph, it's for playing linguistic games with cliched expressions. That is a talent of a sort, but not of an enormously high order. One can only parody and lampoon the kitsch accretions of centuries so many times before one falls into the same abyss of kitsch oneself. He has nothing like Dreiser's or Dostoevsky's or Joyce's deeper understanding of the deforming power of kitsch on the human mind. Perhaps his real peer is someone like S.J. Perelman or Kurt Vonnegut. Or Thomas Pynchon (who apparently took a class taught by Nabokov in college) in an early good-but-not-great novel like V.
77 - No Oprah Zone
One other comment: there was ONE enthusiastic interpretation of the novel here that was well-argued, and that was Phillip's. Insofar as Nabokov's artistry can be defended, Phillip defends it. He's a "cruel writer" with "cruel humor" - yes. Phillip finds him rewarding despite that fact; I don't. But if there is one person on the page who made a convincing case for Nabokov, he's the one.
Rodney, Lisa, Leslie, and Andrew, on the other hand, don't make any kind of case at all. They simply parrot the received wisdom about this eloquent sadist.
78 - Austin Wallace
Can't we just enjoy the book? This is why I dislike both critics and criticism. Ok, so the intro is a meta-fictional device. Ok, so the opening line is an egregious cliche. Neither of these is a new phenomenon. It's a good but flawed book. Finis.
79 - Jordan Richardson
Can't we just enjoy the book? This is why I dislike both critics and criticism.
Enjoying books/films/music/art is what fair and accurate criticism is all about.
80 - LMcDonald
I completely agree with you. I had to read this book for a class, and while many books start out slow, in the end you are rewarded with good plot and character development, not so with this one. This book is just vulgar and that's the only reason people like it. There is no prose, or art or anything else. I guess I'm small minded I simply could not enjoy a book where someone molests a child. The fact that so many enjoy reading this filth, is beyond disturbing. Who will protect the children????
81 - NOMOS
Lolita is OK.Yet it has been receiving too many praises,way too many.The novel has many cliches,and despite the fact that its topic revolves around child abuse,the story and the descriptions didn't shock me,they just bored me.I know a writer can't write a memorable book about something "normal",but the topic of child abuse is a bit too delicate to be "normalized",even if it's just fiction.I'm not saying this book should be banned,neither am I saying that it's pornography.The problem is that the readers and the critics who keep praising the novel forget the fact that some people are bothered by child abuse,for me at least child abuse means much more than a literary motive and it's impossible to read it and not correlate it with real cases of child abuse,I just can't.Some readers experience things differently.Child abuse,for me at least is a bad thing and I don't want to have anything to do with it.I should like to point out again that in no way do I think that reading and talking about this book is bad,it's even desirable to mention Lolita when talking about literary techniques,but the only reason this novel is receiving so many praises is because of its scandalous nature.Although I do enjoy Nabokov's style of "normalizing" denaturated things,which in some cases can be really funny,this book fails to impress me.When I was talking with my colleagues about it,some were praising it as if it were the best book of all times!They kept saying that the fact that you can read the explicit descriptions without being offended is the best thing the novel has to offer.If I remember correctly,the only reason I wasn't deeply offended by the dirty descriptions is not due to Nabokov's God-given talent (which in my humble opinion is a moderated one,at least when talking about "Lolita"),but because they were too poor.It was like watching a naked stripper dance in the dark;you can't be offended by her nudity and the sexual nature of her dance because you just can't see her.The dirty scences from the novel were just too blurred and poorly constructed that they failed to shock me.One of the lamest moments in the novel is when H.H. talks about Lolita's name,and syllabifies it :Lo-lee-tah ... I have only one thing to say about it: pa-the-tik
This is what I think about Lolita.A good novel,yes.An exceptional novel?No.A novel worth praising and shoving down students' throats? HELL NO!
I think I speak for everyone (and if I don't then I kindly ask you to forgive me) when I say that there are plenty of other novels out there,much much better than Lolita,whose writers don't even get half the credit Nabokov does.
And if there are people who think I'm just too much of a puritan to enjoy novels like Lolita,I'd like to point out that one of my favorite books is "Coños",a Spanish post-modernist masterpiece in which the personality of different women is described by analyzing their genitals (coño in Spanish is the vulgar word depicting the female sexual organs,yeah,the P word).
82 - Pablo
Though this is belaboring the point since it's obvious many people have articulated their good two cents on this matter, when I read this particular critique of Lolita, I had some inkling that the critic who wrote it had some other ulterior motive for not liking this book, and it had nothing to do with the artistry of the language or the complexity of the plot. Her defenders more or less prove my suspicion. The critic J. Schneider and commenters like "No Oprah Zone" and "LMcDonald" are just extremely uncomfortable with the subject matter explored in this novel in ludicrous detail--pedophilia and guiltless lust and children involved in sexual acts. It may also be the vulgar and flippant aspect of the language, which is not the staid, subtle and proper writing of the classic nineteenth century tome but is instead very blunt, cynical and at times insulting. The same can be said of the episodic and impressionistic modernist language employed in Finnegan's Wake (which the critic also disliked deeply). What this critique more or less points to is to a rather unsuccessful and, at times, simplistic attempt at making it seem like the style and artistic merit of the book is what is at issue, not the prurient content. And because in mainstream literary criticism one must be an "objective" observer, the content is not fair game in negative commentary, or at least it can't be main theme of criticism, so this critic grasped at stylistic straws to say that which she just can't bring herself to say: the book deals with nasty subjects she finds morally repugnant. Of course, if she were to concentrate on this issue, she would have a far stronger case, but it would also make her seem small-minded and provincial, which as a critic striving to be seen as "cosmopolitan" is simply not the impression that needs to be made. And I'm no academic, so there is no bias on my part in supporting the novel's reputation's "status-quo".
As for me personally, the book works on so many levels. It is one of the best comedies I have ever read because, to be honest, I love blunt language that skewers and degrades people and situations that deserve such treatment. I have literally giggled and gafawed through a good portion of the novel. And the thematic slyness and manipulation is like nothing I've experienced in literature--I began to actually like Humbert, and this took me by utter surprise, since he's definitely not a relatable character for his debasement, solipsism and vileness is extremely repulsive. But to get a reader as cynical as me to sympathize with him is just extraordinary co-optation, making the reader complicit in the lewdness of it all. The effect is one of a kind.