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The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated

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It is actually possible to read the story and make sense out of it without reference to any of the annotations, but almost any reader will be keenly aware of having missed a lot in the process. That is, you don't really miss any of the story without the annotations, but much of what makes Lolita famous is what's going on between the lines, and, unless you speak both English and French and have an encyclopedic knowledge of literature in both languages, you probably won't get more than 10% of this "extra" material without a good set of annotations.

As the name implies, "The Annotated Lolita" is superbly annotated, translating foreign phrases, explaining literary references, and pointing out connections between characters in different parts of the story. Unfortunately, this has the effect of sacrificing some of the surprise in the surface story, not to mention giving you neck pain from constantly flipping back and forth while you read.

But if you don't mind taking the time, you can get the best of both worlds from this edition. You begin by reading the text of the novel straight through one time without reference to either the introduction or the annotations. Having done that, you next read the introduction (which is excellent in its own right, but which really does depend on you already having read the story) and finally, skim the text again, checking out each annotation as you go. It will take more time, but you'll get to enjoy the surface story without distractions and you'll have the pleasure of watching all the mysteries clear up on the second pass.

This is my suggestion about reading 'Lolita' - the first time, delve into it without the benefit of annotations. Read an edition other than Appel's, or - if you're a stronger person than I am - simply ignore the numbers in the margin. Digest it for what it is, explore the story, create opinions and thoughts in your own mind. Even the most learned scholar will feel ignorant at times - Nabokov is, unquestionably, a genius of language and allusions - but I cannot stress enough how vital it is to read this book as an outsider. Allow a few months to go by. And then delve heartily into this annotated edition. The insights provided by Appel are gems, and makes an entirely new experience of the story. He's a passionate scholar and that is reflected in his careful detail, his concern with Nabokov's input, and his personal voice coming though the notes. Some of the notes hit you over the head, a few things seem glossed over, and his obsession with Nabokov's other works get slightly tedious to someone who isn't as dedicated to the author as Appel is. However, on the whole, the notes are absolutely precious and give a depth to the book that is continually lurking behind the surface during a first-time "ignorant" reading. I would have been horribly disappointed at the plot disclosures, as well as terribly confused at times, if I had read this version when I first read the book. But to the reader "in-the-know," Nabokov's genius shines through, as does his humor and sly cleverness that don't neccessarily pop out at first. The notes range from the purely practical (translations of the interspersed French phrases) to the explanatory (literary history is invoked at the most unlikelist of places) to the anecdotal (Nabokov's own musings, his expertise in entemology, etc). But take my advice - read it first without the notes, and then go back. You'll thank me!

When I was a young man and first encountered Lolita I was pleasantly taken with the audacity of the good Professor Vladimir Nabokov's intent. Like most undergraduates it was clear to me that "shocking the bourgeoisie" was always good sport. Now that some decades have passed and I have had the opportunity to re-read the novel and then to read it a third time with the insights provided by Professor Alfred Appel's annotations, I can only say, it is a singular pleasure and a troubling experience.

Lolita is everything a great novel should be, challenging us intellectually, disturbing us emotionally, leading us to fascination and revulsion, making us question our values and our preconceptions while compelling us to turn the pages. A close and sober reading leaves one feeling a kind of tristesse, as the French say, that cannot be easily dismissed. On the one hand, the conception and development of the novel is brilliant. The language is Joycean, the ironies delicious, the plot twists delightful, the theme compelling, the characters indelible, the milieu veracious.

On the other hand, the "unreliable narrator"--I never liked that term: he's reliable; he just isn't admirable--who is the novel's central character, Humbert Humbert, the Old World dirty middle-aged man taking sexual advantage of a child whom he has trapped, is without doubt a vile creature. And yet--and this is part of the genius of the novel--one cannot help but identify with his tainted love, his hopeless, doomed passion. And indeed one even identifies with the task he has perversely inherited, that of looking after a teenaged girl and keeping her out of harm's way, a formidable task with which almost any parent can identify. (Part of the dramatic irony throughout the novel stems from Humbert's dual role as lover and parent. Something to think about.) What one cannot abide, of course, is Humbert's obsessive jealousy and his overbearing attempts at psychological dominance.

Why is it that "normal" men do not fall in love with young girls (to say nothing of pre-adolescent "nymphets")? Why is it that one loves them without falling in love with them? Is it not "wise" in an evolutionary sense to be there first, so to speak? No doubt the evolutionary mechanism demands that drive in some of us, but at what cost, and in the modern society, to what end?

Normal men do not chase after pre-adolescent girls partly because it is against the law, and partly because society condemns those that do, and partly because older girls are more interesting, but most often simply because such a relationship would never work. The intense, masochistic, obsessive love that Hum feels for little Lo is all there is of permanence in such a relationship. When that is gone, there is nothing left. "Dollie" must go her own way, make her own life, and Humbert must go back to his books and his lurking by school yards. Lolita at twelve is not capable of loving Humbert. By the time she is sixteen she is bored with him. And by the time she is an adult he is an embarrassment, a skeleton in the closet of her former life.

So we know as we begin Nabokov's mid-century masterpiece that Humbert's love is doomed. We also fear that something terrible is going to happen to Lolita because she is being robbed of her adolescence and forced into a kind of physical and emotional servitude. Note well the entrance of Claire Quilty, the libertine, who is part foil to Humbert and part the embodiment of the moral abyss that one may fall into. Indeed Quilty is the horror that Humbert Humbert himself might very well become, which is why his hatred for Quilty is so intense, accentuating as Quilty does the extent of Humbert's perversion. Note that Quilty fulfills (offstage and after the fact, as it were) our worst fears for Lolita. Humbert addresses Quilty as one addresses the hated parts of one's very soul.

But enough. The word limit here prevents a full critical treatment of Lolita. For those interested there is Harold Bloom's collection of critical essays, Interpretations of Lolita (1987), to read. You might also want to look at my reviews of the non-annotated edition of the novel and at my reviews of the two very interesting films based on Nabokov's work, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962) and Adrian Lyne's Lolita (1997). My intention here is to recommend this edition because of the light shed on the text by Professor Appel's gloss, especially his translations of the many French phrases that Humbert (who is a professor of European literature, as was Nabokov, one notes in passing) sprinkles throughout the story. I would also like to correct an error in a review below in which it is asserted that Professor Appel is actually Professor Nabokov in camouflage (perhaps like a butterfly). While annotating his own novel in pseudonym is something that Nabokov might very well do and do with delight, I must point out that Appel does indeed exist (at least he has a Website) and of course Professor Nabokov is dead, and so the reviewer is mistaken.

Full disclosure: I credit "Lolita" with turning me into the lit geek recovering English major type that I am today. Read it when I was eighteen; got sucked in on the first page by the haunting echoes of Edgar Allen Poe. No mere mortal should be able to perform the tricks with the English language that Nabokov got away with in this book.

Get the annotated edition. On a first reading it's more fun to puzzle things out for yourself, but when you go back (and you will) Appel's notes will show you everything you missed the first time around.

Much has been made over the supposedly pornographic nature of this book. Far more fascinating to me is its hilarious depiction of all that was middlebrow tacky in postwar American pop culture -- particularly tourist culture.

Screw "On the Road." "Lolita" is the ultimate road novel.

Those who say Lolita is an empty book did not really pay attention to it as they read it. At 16 years old you already think you know everything and there is nothing new to impress you. This is neither criticism, nor an insult, just a fact. You will find out differently later in life.
Lolita brings out many themes. There is the obvious like representation of the dark side of humanity. There is also a statement of the rape of Western culture, done quietly, discreetly by an older, more influential, more sophisticated Europe. There are elements of Europe's traditions, Europe's reluctance to let modern America be, the desire to change it, and modern America's seduction power and obsession with flash and glamour in society, sex, and pop culture. There is also the older generation trying to regin in and control the younger generation who is trying to break away, but can't do that without the older's influence and guidance however misled it may be. There are domination issues in relationships that ultimately lead to their own destruction and death. The language is ensnaring (just look at the first few lines - really hear them): "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta." The opening chapter is devoted to her name. It's poignant and beautifully sculpted. Nabokov's intricately woven word play through the dark and sardonic Quilty is brilliant and tense as he subtly lets Humbert know that he's aware of what's going on with Lolita, even though he's a stranger: "Where the devil did you get her?"

"Who's the lassie?"
"My daughter."
"You lie - she's not."
"What?"
"I said July was hot."

Quilty doesn't want Lolita per se; he wants the power over Humbert, the power to crush the fantasy, the power to seduce the lover away. And the word games he plays with Humbert on the hotel registries are cold and wonderfully calculated. Quilty is a representation of humanity's deceptions, failures, and the uncanny ability to justify it all according to need and offering no apologies. If you like Shakespeare, you should pick up on the allusions to the Bard's works, particularly Hamlet. Not to mention the allusions to Poe, and numerous other authors. There are allusions to the art of madness. There are psychoanalytical elements at every turn. This novel is an English major's bliss. It's eloquent, powerful, and so delicious. The style is fluid and captivating. If you walk away from Lolita stating you haven't gotten the least little thing from it, you didn't really read it. I recommend the novel highly. I recommend reading the annotations after reading the novel straight through. Anyone can read Shakespeare with Clif Notes (not bashing Will; I love him) as long as they just want to skim the surface for the basic idea and claim to know what it all means, but it takes true intellect to contemplate Nabokov because his works are involved and there is so much to see. I say this not to discourage anyone or make it seem as though reading Lolita is impossible without a degree of some sort (quite the contrary), just that you shouldn't read this expecting not to think about it. If you want to grow in the world of literature, this is a novel that will help you do that. Nabokov created a fulfilling novel, haunting, rich with dark, humorous, and poetic tapestry as Humbert attempts to immortalize his nymphet and himself.

Greg Hullender's review (which is a Spotlight Review as I type) is dead on, especially insofar as he points out that all but the most erudite reader will miss out on most of what is going on beneath the surface of the page without reading the annotations. But...

It should be emphasized that, if you read the annotations during your first time through the book, you will completely and totally spoil the story. Put otherwise, the outcome of the whole book is given away in the first few annotations, and repeated many times thereafter. Unless you're the kind of person who reads the last page of a book first, don't read the annotations the first time through.

Also, I think it is helpful to know that Nabokov was no fan of symbolism or allegories... so don't waste time and energy looking for them in Lolita, because the author himself said that they're not there.

I recommend you buy the annotated version of this text because without the notes it is impossible to catch all of the word-play Nabokov uses in this book. The annotated version will give you a richer experience with the novel, well worth the extra cash. Few, if any, readers are skilled enough to catch all of Nabokov's allusions. In Lolita, there are over sixty allusions to E.A. Poe alone! Even if you are good enough to get all the allusions, anagrams, and other word games, did you catch all of the Lepidoptera imagery/metaphor?...What's Lepidoptera?...It's the word that's making you think, "Hmm, those notes might not be a bad idea."

It is difficult to add anything new not already said by previous reviewers of this book. I think, however, that a distinction should be made between the absolutely extraordinary narrative and the actual topic of the book. Most negative reviews refer to the apparent "lack of morals" of the story, due to the fact that it revolves around a case of paedophilia.

The main character recognises the "perverted" nature of his emotions and desires, so it is difficult to support any idea that the book fosters any concept of sexual liaison with a minor, despite the fact that he ends up acting upon his obsession. In any case, the extraordinary power of the book goes beyond the issue of Humbert's sexual inclination for Lolita.

The narrative puts the reader right under Humberts skin. The vivid description of his obsessive/compulsive behavior is nothing like I've read before - its realism is frightning.

I own both the "regular" version and the anotated version of Lolita. I've found that the anotated version is not ultra necessary; though useful at times, I've noticed that it gives away some spoilers.... I personally think that it is not worth the price difference unless the reader becomes a real fan of the book; some commets are interesting as an insider's story to the author and his writing.

By far, the best fiction book I've ever come across.

Some observations on this, one of the great novels of the twentieth century:

Shakespeare's Juliet was 13-years-old, but Nabokov's Lolita was 12. The so-called "shocking" and "perverse" nature of the sexuality that Nabokov explores is lost if the nymphet is a sexually mature teenager. Incidentally, by the time they are wheeling across the country, Lolita apparently gains sexually maturity, as evidenced from the first sentence of Chapter 33, Part One which reads: "In the gay town of Lepingville I bought her four books of comics, a box of candy, a box of sanitary pads...."

Humbert's sexuality is actually a strategy in the evolutionary game. Instead of waiting until the female is sexually mature, the Humbert Humberts of the world pre-select their little darlings so that they are already in position, so to speak, when she reaches sexual maturity. Society, of course, cannot buy this. Its abhorrence is but one of the myriad taboos it concocts to protect itself from the evolutionary mechanism, a mechanism that cares not at all what society thinks, thumbing its nose, so to speak, at all societies and their ephemeral prejudices.

Among the most chilling sentences in the novel are these at the end of Part One after Lolita learns that her mother is dead. Humbert narrates: "At the hotel we had separate rooms, but in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it up very gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go."

Also chilling is this from Lolita (half in jest, half in bitter revelation) the morning after their first night together: "You chump...You revolting creature. I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you've done to me. I ought to call the police and tell them you raped me. Oh, you dirty, dirty old man."

As a literary artist, Nabokov might be compared with Anthony Burgess. Both are strikingly original stylists and gifted masters of the language, and both had one very popular novel that made them famous (which of course neither thought was his best work), and both have written many erudite and precious volumes. Although I usually find Burgess's style a little too dense for me, his A Clockwork Orange was excellent. Also both Lolita and A Clockwork Orange were made into movies directed by Stanley Kubrick.

While one might imagine that women, especially feminists, would positively despise Lolita, it ain't necessarily so. I know one feminist English prof who teaches it at the university level. Understandably they emphasize the depravity of Humbert and his virtual enslavement of Lolita. But those women who do resist the novel do so because the story reveals a disagreeable fact of human sexuality they would prefer to forget, namely that for most males, youth itself is a supreme value in the old sex game. By the same token most young men do not like to see aging rockers or graying Richard Gere types or fat Hollywood producers walking off with beautiful starlets.

Although Lolita was (and is) ahead of its time, it is necessarily a "fiction" with the central character necessarily an "antihero" for the sake of the prejudices of society. Nonetheless, one of Nabokov's motivations in writing "Lolita" was to show that, however strongly society condemned their love it was a real expression of human sexuality and not a Freudian type "perversion." (Nabokov despised Freud and considered psychoanalysis a "racket.") Unfortunately (but understandably!) he was not able to overcome the taboo himself and come out of the closet. (If indeed he was in the closet.) Additionally, he discovered, I suspect, in writing the novel that not only would society (and his readership) accept only a tragic version of the story, but that inevitably, given the mores of society, such a version was the only one possible. To write the story with a happy ending, with Humbert the proud father paying for the wedding, perhaps, and sending his little love off to middle class banality with some "Dick Schiller" was unthinkable artistically and psychologically. Indeed, it would have been the common place resolution of the usual "family affair."

By the way, Nabokov wrote a precursor of Lolita, a rather longish short story entitled "The Enchanter" which was eventually published in English. "The Enchanter" is interesting but doesn't have the delicious ironic humor or anything like the scope of Lolita.

The edition with annotations by "Alfred Appel Jr." adds to the enjoyment of the novel if you tend to the pedantic. Most of the French phrases are translated. Be aware however that "Alfred Appel Jr." is really Vladimir Nabokov himself in pseudonym!

Lolita is so brilliantly duplicitous a novel that the reader, at first, barely knows what to make of it. The subject matter is dark: a pedophile worms his way into a single-parent household, and then gains intimate access to the young girl when a fluke accident kills the mother. And yet the novel itself is seductively funny and gracefully artistic.

Undergirding all of this deception is the voice of the narrator, the pedophile himself. He is educated, ironic, and very expressive. Nabokov succeeds in conveying the full force of his obsessive attachment to his "nymphet."

The art is notable for a number of facets. One is the relentlessly allusive complexity: references to Poe, Proust, Carroll, Conrad, Dostoyevsky, and many others. Recurring leitmotifs: sunglasses, mirrors, the color red, the number 342. Anagrams, puns, other hilarious wordplay. The relentless doubling -- of characters, of letters, of words.

The book is also an ironic and perceptive take on American middlebrow culture in the mid 1950s: hotels, motels, tourist traps, magazines. The attentive reader will experience the occasional spasm of pleasure of close-up recognition of the cultural subject, time and again.

Moreover, the book is just hilariously funny in places. Witness Nabokov's take on the American advertising tradition of always arranging photos of schoolchildren with the appropriate eye towards requisite diversity. And the paragraph on the agony of a noisy hotel room: the clatter of the elevator, the inane verbal volleys in the hallways, the wall-shaking whoosh of the flushing toilet, all of which takes place seemingly right next to the temple of the poor sleep-seeker.

But every now and then the mask drops, and the horror shines through. Humbert Humbert lets it slip at one point that absolutely every night, after she believes he has nodded off, his little Lolita weeps herself to sleep. That he has utterly destroyed her life is made all too clear; we see her at the end of the novel, in a ramshackle home, pregnant, poor, desperately trying to construct a decent life, still confused, pathetically thankful for Humbert's gift of some money.

No doubt Nabokov would recoil at the reader who finds a "moral" to his work, but I was unable to repress a certain instinct: that this book is Nabokov's cry of rage against the corruption and destruction of innocence. Nabokov's feud with Freud is well known, and shines through on every page of this book. He baits the reader, tempting him/her to find symbols and interpretations and meaning in the way that Freudians dissect dreams, and novels, too. In the end, the artifice exists only for its own sake, and many of the apparent significances crumble to dust.

But more specifically, Nabokov attacks these misguided ideas directly. He gets great mileage out of the equivalence of "therapist" with "the rapist." And there is one haunting scene when he is brought into meet with his Lolita's school's headmistress. The headmistress spouts all sorts of Freudian psychobabble, expressing deep concerns about Dolly's apparent lack of appropriate sexual development. The reader wants to grab her, to shake her, to plead with her -- and with Humbert -- to just let Dolores Haze be an innocent child.

And also, at the end of the book, Humbert Humbert as a sort-of epiphany on the last page, half-realizing (no sense of responsibility is ever complete with this guy) as he watches a group of schoolchildren playing, what a terrible tragedy it was for him to force his Lolita out of that world. How sad it is that her voice has so long been absent from the happily playing kids.

I felt that sense throughout this book, as though Nabokov was saying: pedophiles, Freudians, everyone who wants to exploit the innocent joy in the world, and to reduce it to something sexualized, over-analyzed, distorted and contorted -- stay out! Let art be, let children be. Let innocence be. Take that, Dr. Freud.

Of course, Dolly is already far from innocent when Humbert begins to abuse her in earnest -- a fact that he uses to rationalize his behavior. So many join in corrupting her, and then blame one another for starting it.

In the end, for all of Nabokov's clever literary sleight-of-hand, for all of the "stylistic showboating" (as another reviewer below puts it), in the end, all that really matters is that Lolita -- and Humbert -- live. They leap off the page with such an incredible reality, a vitality, they haunt the imagination of the reader. And their imagined lives, more than anything else, are what render the book a memorable experience.