"Lolita" 50th Anniversary links

Excerpt from the first chapter
NPR: 50 Years Later, 'Lolita' Still Seduces Readers
On the Media: My Sin, My Soul... Whose Lolita?

From the Atlantic Monthly:
What is one to make of Lolita? In a prickly postscript to the novel, Mr. Nabokov dismisses this question as a problem dreamed up by "Teachers of Literature": he rejects the satiric interpretations which critics have put upon Lolita and asserts, in effect, that it is simply a story he had to get off his chest. That all of this is too ingenuous by half is evident from the parodic style in which Lolita is written: a combination of pastiches of well-known styles, spoofing pedantry, analysis of passion à la français, Joycean word games, puns, and all kinds of verbal play. Wild, fantastic, wonderfully imaginative, it is a style which parodies everything it touches. It surely justifies, at least in part, those critics who have seen in Lolita a satire of the romantic novel, of "Old Europe" in contact with "Young America," or of "chronic American adolescence and shabby materialism." But above all Lolita seems to me an assertion of the power of the comic spirit to wrest delight and truth from the most outlandish materials. It is one of the funniest serious novels I have ever read; and the vision of its abominable hero, who never deludes or excuses himself, brings into grotesque relief the cant, the vulgarity, and the hypocritical conventions that pervade the human comedy.

My take on "Lolita":
It is a great work of art. ("Pale Fire" is his best, by my measure, but that's for another day.)
The narrator Humbert is a monster. But the lyricism and precision of his "confession" is so humorous and crystalline and musical in it's vibrant wordplay, the reader is compelled to keep turning the pages. The emotional relationship of the reader with the characters is toyed with by narrator Humbert. His misplaced sympathies and hostilities lure and repel the reader with a perverse charm.
Humbert is a bully, emotionally blind to the people around him. Obsessed with his own gratification, he is casually cruel but completely oblivious to the pain and death he engenders. The comedy of the story is partly in his flippant attitude toward others' pain.
We cannot empathize with Humbert, despite his wit. But ultimately see him as a very pitiable creature.
An old girlfriend and I read the book aloud one winter. She explained some of the literary references in the story. There are numerous Edgar Allan Poe refernces which illuminate the story: Annabel Lee, is a poem by Poe (explicitly referenced in "Lolita") which enchants the reader through it's music and leaves them only later to realize the song is about death. "Lolita" is the same kind of musical tragedy. Part of it's genious lies in the comedic veneer which masks a terribly sad story.
Nabokov saw art as "beauty plus pity." "Lolita" is a wonderful example of that equation.
The film adaptations of "Lolita" are both disappointments.
The 1962 version was directed by Kubrick, written by Nabokov and was perfectly cast -- James Mason as Humbert, Shelley Winters as Charlotte and Peter Sellers as Quilty. But Nabokov dropped the ball on the script. I think his low estimation of American audiences led to poor choices -- relying on laborious physical comedy sequences and blunt, artless melodrama.
The 1997 version with Jeremy Irons is more in keeping with the prose. But it is delivered with such melancholy that the exuberance of the words is lost under the funereal weight.
Maybe "Lolita" is unadaptable for film, for it relies so heavily on words. "Lolita" is a masterful performance of the English language.
More than that, it was written for the printed word. In that medium, the reader infuses their own tone. Films tells us how to feel and, by that nature, undermines the key to "Lolita."
With Humbert as the unreliable narrator, the reader is left to decide how the music sounds.
The fact that the book was (is) so controversial only enhances this aspect. It is a dangerous book that receives little criticism from people who actually read it. But those who do each will have something different to say about it. -- McLir